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

Clark JS (2010) Individuals and the variation needed for high species diversity in forest trees. Science 327:1129–1132

A journal article with 2 authors

Resing JA, Barrett PM (2014) Ocean chemistry: Fingerprints of a trace nutrient. Nature 511:164–165

A journal article with 3 authors

Renata H, Zhou Q, Baran PS (2013) Strategic redox relay enables a scalable synthesis of ouabagenin, a bioactive cardenolide. Science 339:59–63

A journal article with 5 or more authors

Bouvier LC, Costa MM, Connelly JN, et al (2018) Evidence for extremely rapid magma ocean crystallization and crust formation on Mars. Nature 558:586–589

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Benatar D (2012) The Second Sexism. Wiley-Blackwell, Oxford, UK

An edited book

Bojarski B, Mishchenko AS, Troitsky EV, Weber A (eds) (2006) C*-algebras and Elliptic Theory. Birkhäuser, Basel

A chapter in an edited book

Capaccioli M, Galano S (2012) La giostra dei personaggi nel crepuscolo dei Borbone. In: Galano S (ed) Arminio Nobile e la misura del cielo: ovvero Le disavventure di un astronomo napoletano. Springer, Milano, pp 57–74

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

Andrew E (2014) Trial Of Stem Cell Transplants Yields Positive Results For Patients With MS. 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 (1972) Can Cost Accounting Help Manage the Rising Costs of ADP Operations? 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

Heitz SL (2017) A Mindfulness Approach to Help Teachers And Staff Provide Support to High School Students: A Self-Instructional Curriculum. 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

Kelly M (1993) After Waco’s Inferno, an Inquisition That Insists on Rational Answers. New York Times 43

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Clark 2010).
This sentence cites two references (Clark 2010; Resing and Barrett 2014).

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

Two authors: (Resing and Barrett 2014)
Three or more authors: (Bouvier 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

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