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

Bretag AH (2007) Stem cell treatment of dystrophic dogs. Nature 450:E23; discussion E23-5

A journal article with 2 authors

Osborn TJ, Briffa KR (2004) Climate. The real color of climate change? Science 306:621–622

A journal article with 3 authors

Barnham KW, Nelson J, Stevens RA (2000) Did civil reactors supply plutonium for weapons? Nature 407:833–834

A journal article with 5 or more authors

Liu F, Marquardt S, Lister C, et al (2010) Targeted 3’ processing of antisense transcripts triggers Arabidopsis FLC chromatin silencing. Science 327:94–97

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Krasner D (2011) A History of Modern Drama. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, Chichester, UK

An edited book

Grimaud G, Standaert F-X (eds) (2008) Smart Card Research and Advanced Applications: 8th IFIP WG 8.8/11.2 International Conference, CARDIS 2008, London, UK, September 8-11, 2008. Proceedings. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

A chapter in an edited book

Iam-On N, Boongoen T (2013) Pairwise Similarity for Cluster Ensemble Problem: Link-Based and Approximate Approaches. In: Hameurlain A, Küng J, Wagner R (eds) Transactions on Large-Scale Data- and Knowledge-Centered Systems IX. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, pp 95–122

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

Davis J (2016) Viruses May Be More Infectious In The Morning Than Later In The Day. In: IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/viruses-may-be-more-infectious-in-the-morning-than-later-in-the-day/. 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 (2006) NASA: Sound Management and Oversight Key to Addressing Crew Exploration Vehicle Project Risks. 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

Rajendran N (2010) Assessment of upper extremity strength, power, and flexibility characteristics of college-aged male and female students. Doctoral dissertation, California State University, Long Beach

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 (2008) SAILING. New York Times LI8

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Bretag 2007).
This sentence cites two references (Osborn and Briffa 2004; Bretag 2007).

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

Two authors: (Osborn and Briffa 2004)
Three or more authors: (Liu et al. 2010)

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