How to format your references using the Journal of Comparative Physiology A citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Journal of Comparative Physiology A. 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	Download the output style file
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

Meyer R (2012) Finding the true value of US climate science. Nature 482:133

A journal article with 2 authors

Pan RK, Fortunato S (2014) Author Impact Factor: tracking the dynamics of individual scientific impact. Sci Rep 4:4880

A journal article with 3 authors

Moreira D, Le Guyader H, Philippe H (2000) The origin of red algae and the evolution of chloroplasts. Nature 405:69–72

A journal article with 5 or more authors

Hart RA, Xu X, Legere R, Gibble K (2007) A quantum scattering interferometer. Nature 446:892–895

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Faticoni TG (2006) The Mathematics of Infinity. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ

An edited book

Schumacher R (2010) Fetal Radiology: A Diagnostic Atlas, 2nd Edition. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

A chapter in an edited book

Gruber PM (2013) Applications of an Idea of Voronoĭ, a Report. In: Bárány I, Böröczky KJ, Tóth GF, Pach J (eds) Geometry — Intuitive, Discrete, and Convex: A Tribute to László Fejes Tóth. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, pp 109–157

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 Journal of Comparative Physiology A.

Blog post

Andrews R (2016) US And China Ratify Paris Climate Deal In “Moment We Decided To Save Our Planet.” In: IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/environment/us-and-china-ratify-paris-climate-deal-in-moment-we-decided-to-save-our-planet/. Accessed 30 Oct 2018

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 (1988) Leo Herbert, GAO, 1956-1974. U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Coulibaly I (2017) Influence of Gender and Age on the Performance of a PBIS program: Quantitative Analysis of Secondary Data from a Midwestern Suburban Public Middle School. Doctoral dissertation, Lindenwood 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

Stellin S (2014) Your Digital Trail Follows You to the Border. New York Times F3

In-text citations

References should be cited in the text by name and year in parentheses:

This sentence cites one reference (Meyer 2012).
This sentence cites two references (Meyer 2012; Pan and Fortunato 2014).

Here are examples of in-text citations with multiple authors:

Two authors: (Pan and Fortunato 2014)
Three or more authors: (Hart et al. 2007)

About the journal

Full journal title	Journal of Comparative Physiology A
Abbreviation	J. Comp. Physiol. A Neuroethol. Sens. Neural Behav. Physiol.
ISSN (print)	0340-7594
ISSN (online)	1432-1351
Scope	Animal Science and Zoology Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics Physiology Behavioral Neuroscience