How to format your references using the Journal of Physics A: Mathematical and Theoretical citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Journal of Physics A: Mathematical and Theoretical. 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	Find the style here: output styles overview
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

[1]

Merlin R 2007 Radiationless electromagnetic interference: evanescent-field lenses and perfect focusing Science 317 927–9

A journal article with 2 authors

[1]

Sheinin M Y and Wang M D 2012 Biochemistry. A DNA twist diffuses and hops Science 338 56–7

A journal article with 3 authors

[1]

Lee M G, Park H S and Hwang H S 2010 Detection of a large-scale structure of intracluster globular clusters in the Virgo cluster Science 328 334–6

A journal article with 99 or more authors

[1]

Nourbakhsh I, Sargent R, Wright A, Cramer K, McClendon B and Jones M 2006 Mapping disaster zones Nature 439 787–8

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

[1]

Fell G J 2013 Decoding the IT Value Problem (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.)

An edited book

[1]

Eilks I and Hofstein A 2015 Relevant Chemistry Education: From Theory to Practice (Rotterdam: SensePublishers)

A chapter in an edited book

[1]

Cristini C, Cesa-Bianchi M, Cesa-Bianchi G and Porro A 2011 Creatività nell’infanzia L’ultima creatività: Luci nella vecchiaia ed M Cesa-Bianchi, G Cesa-Bianchi and A Porro (Milano: Springer) pp 61–77

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 Physics A: Mathematical and Theoretical.

Blog post

[1]

Andrew E 2015 Watch This Poor Hyena Fail Miserably At Sex IFLScience

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

[1]

Government Accountability Office 1992 Job Training Partnership Act: Actions Needed to Improve Participant Support Services (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office)

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

[1]

McCorkle W B 2005 Tongue, Nib, Block, Bit: Rhetorical Delivery and Technologies of Writing Doctoral dissertation (Columbus, OH: Ohio State 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

[1]

McWHORTER J 2017 How to Listen to Donald Trump Every Day for Years New York Times SR1

In-text citations

References should be cited in the text by sequential numbers in square brackets:

This sentence cites one reference [1].
This sentence cites two references [1,2].
This sentence cites four references [1–4].

About the journal

Full journal title	Journal of Physics A: Mathematical and Theoretical
Abbreviation	J. Phys. A Math. Theor.
ISSN (print)	1751-8113
ISSN (online)	1751-8121
Scope	Mathematical Physics Modelling and Simulation Statistics and Probability General Physics and Astronomy Statistical and Nonlinear Physics