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

Lin H (2007) piRNAs in the germ line. Science 316:397

A journal article with 2 authors

Braakman I, Otsu M (2008) Biochemistry. Cargo load reduction. Science 321:499–500

A journal article with 3 authors

Zhao J, Goldman AS, Hartwig JF (2005) Oxidative addition of ammonia to form a stable monomeric amido hydride complex. Science 307:1080–1082

A journal article with 5 or more authors

Mohanan V, Nakata T, Desch AN, et al (2018) C1orf106 is a colitis risk gene that regulates stability of epithelial adherens junctions. Science 359:1161–1166

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

MacRoberts (2014) MacRoberts on Scottish Construction Contracts. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, Chichester, UK

An edited book

Bernkop-Schnürch A (ed) (2009) Oral Delivery of Macromolecular Drugs: Barriers, Strategies and Future Trends. Springer US, New York, NY

A chapter in an edited book

Gaestel M (2006) Molecular Chaperones in Signal Transduction. In: Starke K, Gaestel M (eds) Molecular Chaperones in Health and Disease. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, pp 93–109

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 (2015) Your Cat’s Fur Color Is Linked To Its Aggressiveness. In: IFLScience. 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 (1974) Review of Certain Activities of the Kentucky Equine Education Programs. 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

Dilenschneider AM (2010) Refusing to be put aside: Women and the meaning of betrayal. Doctoral dissertation, Pacifica Graduate Institute

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

Kenigsberg B (2017) Film Series. New York Times C26

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Lin 2007).
This sentence cites two references (Lin 2007; Braakman and Otsu 2008).

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

Two authors: (Braakman and Otsu 2008)
Three or more authors: (Mohanan et al. 2018)

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