How to format your references using the Journal of Physics Communications citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Journal of Physics Communications. 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]

Lorenz R 2003 Planetary science. The glitter of distant seas Science 302 403–4

A journal article with 2 authors

[1]

Rubio V and Deng X W 2007 Plant science. Standing on the shoulders of GIGANTEA Science 318 206–7

A journal article with 3 authors

[1]

Vogel E K, McCollough A W and Machizawa M G 2005 Neural measures reveal individual differences in controlling access to working memory Nature 438 500–3

A journal article with 99 or more authors

[1]

Wille M, Nägler T F, Lehmann B, Schröder S and Kramers J D 2008 Hydrogen sulphide release to surface waters at the Precambrian/Cambrian boundary Nature 453 767–9

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

[1]

Vegh A 2010 Web Development with the Mac® (Indianapolis, IN, USA: Wiley Publishing, Inc.)

An edited book

[1]

Nihoyannopoulos P and Kisslo J 2009 Echocardiography (London: Springer)

A chapter in an edited book

[1]

Pan M, Li M, Li P and Fang Y 2015 Economic-Robust Session Based Spectrum Trading Spectrum Trading in Multi-Hop Cognitive Radio Networks SpringerBriefs in Electrical and Computer Engineering ed M Li, P Li and Y Fang (Cham: Springer International Publishing) pp 47–59

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 Communications.

Blog post

[1]

Luntz S 2015 Astonishingly Well-Preserved 10,000 Year-Old Woolly Rhinoceros Calf Found 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 1979 Selected FCC Regulatory Policies: Their Purpose and Consequences for Commercial Radio and TV (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]

McCain A K 2015 Influence of market setting and time of purchase on counts of aerobic bacteria, Escherichia coli, and coliform and prevalence of Salmonella and Listeria in beef, pork, and chicken in Vietnam Doctoral dissertation (Mississippi State, MS: Mississippi 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]

Grynbaum M M 2017 They’re Like a Sitcom. Really New York Times C1

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 Communications
ISSN (online)	2399-6528
Scope