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

Tylianakis JM (2009) Ecology. Warming up food webs. Science 323:1300–1301

A journal article with 2 authors

Huang Y, Li D (2014) Soil nitric oxide emissions from terrestrial ecosystems in China: a synthesis of modeling and measurements. Sci Rep 4:7406

A journal article with 3 authors

Watanabe H, Nebel CE, Shikata S (2009) Isotopic homojunction band engineering from diamond. Science 324:1425–1428

A journal article with 5 or more authors

Lunde C, Jensen PE, Haldrup A, et al (2000) The PSI-H subunit of photosystem I is essential for state transitions in plant photosynthesis. Nature 408:613–615

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Glaser R (2015) Symmetry, Spectroscopy, and Crystallography. Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim, Germany

An edited book

Kostianoy AG, Kosarev AN (eds) (2005) The Caspian Sea Environment. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

A chapter in an edited book

Ohye C (2009) History of Stereotactic Surgery in Japan. In: Lozano AM, Gildenberg PL, Tasker RR (eds) Textbook of Stereotactic and Functional Neurosurgery. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, pp 59–63

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 (2017) Scientists Have Discovered A Secret Function Of Lungs. In: IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/scientists-have-discovered-a-secret-function-of-lungs/. 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 (1991) Department of Education GMR. 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

Dickens KR (2010) Factors influencing teacher job satisfaction and their alignment with current district practices in a suburban school district. 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

Martin V (2014) Pitfalls of Privilege. New York Times BR11

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Tylianakis 2009).
This sentence cites two references (Tylianakis 2009; Huang and Li 2014).

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

Two authors: (Huang and Li 2014)
Three or more authors: (Lunde et al. 2000)

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