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]

Gewin V 2002 While industrial agrobiotech R&D falters, opportunities in plant biology in the public sector are growing Nature 419 4–5

A journal article with 2 authors

[1]

Kiberstis P and Roberts L 2014 Breast cancer. A race still unfinished. Introduction Science 343 1451

A journal article with 3 authors

[1]

Holman K T, Pivovar A M and Ward M D 2001 Engineering crystal symmetry and polar order in molecular host frameworks Science 294 1907–11

A journal article with 99 or more authors

[1]

Hall I M, Shankaranarayana G D, Noma K-I, Ayoub N, Cohen A and Grewal S I S 2002 Establishment and maintenance of a heterochromatin domain Science 297 2232–7

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

[1]

Brown B L, Hendrix S B, Hedges D W and Smith T B 2011 Multivariate Analysis for the Biobehavioral and Social Sciences (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.)

An edited book

[1]

Jansen M 2005 Second Generation Wavelets and Applications ed P Oonincx (London: Springer)

A chapter in an edited book

[1]

Sano Y and Kanda T 2016 Blood–Brain Barrier and Blood–Nerve Barrier Neuroimmunological Diseases ed S Kusunoki (Tokyo: Springer Japan) pp 55–69

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]

Fang J 2014 Virgin Birth Confirmed in World’s Longest Snake Species 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 1990 B-2 Bomber: Contract Structure and Selected Provisions (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]

Dinneny P N 2017 End of August Doctoral dissertation (Long Beach, CA: 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

[1]

Gordon M R 2017 Trump Gives Mattis Authority to Send More Troops to Afghanistan New York Times A13

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