How to format your references using the Foundations of Physics citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Foundations of 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

Amaratunga, G.A.J.: Applied physics. A dawn for carbon electronics? Science. 297, 1657–1658 (2002)

A journal article with 2 authors

Weiss, R.A., Stoye, J.P.: Virology. Our viral inheritance. Science. 340, 820–821 (2013)

A journal article with 3 authors

Wardle, D.A., Nilsson, M.-C., Zackrisson, O.: Fire-derived charcoal causes loss of forest humus. Science. 320, 629 (2008)

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Lengronne, A., Katou, Y., Mori, S., Yokobayashi, S., Kelly, G.P., Itoh, T., Watanabe, Y., Shirahige, K., Uhlmann, F.: Cohesin relocation from sites of chromosomal loading to places of convergent transcription. Nature. 430, 573–578 (2004)

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Morocco, C.C., Aguilar, C.M., Bershad, C., Kotula, A.W., Hindin, A.: Supported Literacy for Adolescents. Jossey-Bass, San Francisco, CA, USA (2008)

An edited book

Raman, C., Goldsmith, M.R., Agunbiade, T.A. eds: Short Views on Insect Genomics and Proteomics: Insect Proteomics, Vol.2. Springer International Publishing, Cham (2016)

A chapter in an edited book

Astorg, P.: ω-3 PUFAs and Prostate Cancer: Epidemiological Studies. In: Calviello, G. and Serini, S. (eds.) Dietary Omega-3 Polyunsaturated Fatty Acids and Cancer. pp. 109–148. Springer Netherlands, Dordrecht (2010)

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 Foundations of Physics.

Blog post

Andrew, E.: NASA Makes Awesome Travel Posters For Exoplanets, https://www.iflscience.com/space/nasa-makes-awesome-travel-posters-exoplanets/

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

Government Accountability Office: Perkins Student Loans: Options That Could Make the Program More Financially Independent. U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC (1991)

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Doyle, J.J.: Under the influence: High risk social networks and recidivism, (2012)

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

Saslow, L.: Southampton Sets Aside Spot for Day Laborers, (2007)

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	Foundations of Physics
Abbreviation	Found. Phys.
ISSN (print)	0015-9018
ISSN (online)	1572-9516
Scope	General Physics and Astronomy