How to format your references using the Communications in Theoretical Physics citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Communications in Theoretical Physics. For a complete guide how to prepare your manuscript refer to the journal's instructions to authors.

Using reference management software

Typically you don't format your citations and bibliography by hand. The easiest way is to use a reference manager:

Paperpile	The citation style is built in and you can choose it in Settings > Citation Style or Paperpile > Citation Style in Google Docs.
EndNote	Find the style here: output styles overview
Mendeley, Zotero, Papers, and others	The style is either built in or you can download a CSL file that is supported by most references management programs.
BibTeX	BibTeX syles are usually part of a LaTeX template. Check the instructions to authors if the publisher offers a LaTeX template for this journal.

Journal articles

Those examples are references to articles in scholarly journals and how they are supposed to appear in your bibliography.

Not all journals organize their published articles in volumes and issues, so these fields are optional. Some electronic journals do not provide a page range, but instead list an article identifier. In a case like this it's safe to use the article identifier instead of the page range.

A journal article with 1 author

[1]

Kramers J 2001 Geology. The smile of the Cheshire cat Science 293 619–20

A journal article with 2 authors

[1]

Jagoutz O and Behn M D 2013 Foundering of lower island-arc crust as an explanation for the origin of the continental Moho Nature 504 131–4

A journal article with 3 authors

[1]

Hayes D, Griffin G B and Engel G S 2013 Engineering coherence among excited states in synthetic heterodimer systems Science 340 1431–4

A journal article with 99 or more authors

[1]

Lawler M J, Fujita K, Lee J, Schmidt A R, Kohsaka Y, Kim C K, Eisaki H, Uchida S, Davis J C, Sethna J P and Kim E-A 2010 Intra-unit-cell electronic nematicity of the high-T(c) copper-oxide pseudogap states Nature 466 347–51

Books and book chapters

Here are examples of references for authored and edited books as well as book chapters.

An authored book

[1]

McCrary S A 2009 Mastering Financial Accounting Essentials (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.)

An edited book

[1]

Ullah A A 2014 Asian Immigrants in North America with HIV/AIDS: Stigma, Vulnerabilities and Human Rights ed A S Huque (Singapore: Springer)

A chapter in an edited book

[1]

Jacobs G M, Renandya W A and Power M 2016 Focus on Meaning Simple, Powerful Strategies for Student Centered Learning SpringerBriefs in Education ed W A Renandya and M Power (Cham: Springer International Publishing) pp 29–37

Web sites

Sometimes references to web sites should appear directly in the text rather than in the bibliography. Refer to the Instructions to authors for Communications in Theoretical Physics.

Blog post

[1]

Andrews R 2017 EPA Chief Scott Pruitt Just Said Carbon Dioxide Doesn’t Drive Climate Change IFLScience

Reports

This example shows the general structure used for government reports, technical reports, and scientific reports. If you can't locate the report number then it might be better to cite the report as a book. For reports it is usually not individual people that are credited as authors, but a governmental department or agency like "U. S. Food and Drug Administration" or "National Cancer Institute".

Government report

[1]

Government Accountability Office 2006 Wood Utilization: Federal Research and Product Development Activities, Support, and Technology Transfer (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office)

Theses and dissertations

Theses including Ph.D. dissertations, Master's theses or Bachelor theses follow the basic format outlined below.

Doctoral dissertation

[1]

Pratt P R 2009 Analysis of the thermo-mechanical characteristics of the LENS^TM process for steels using the finite element method Doctoral dissertation (Mississippi State, MS: Mississippi State University)

News paper articles

Unlike scholarly journals, news papers do not usually have a volume and issue number. Instead, the full date and page number is required for a correct reference.

New York Times article

[1]

Gustines G G 2014 Two Graphic Narratives, Inspired by the Fab Four New York Times C6

In-text citations

References should be cited in the text by sequential numbers in square brackets:

This sentence cites one reference [1].
This sentence cites two references [1,2].
This sentence cites four references [1–4].

About the journal

Full journal title	Communications in Theoretical Physics
Abbreviation	Commun. Theor. Phys.
ISSN (print)	0253-6102
Scope	Physics and Astronomy (miscellaneous)

Research and Writing Guides