How to format your references using the Letters in Mathematical Physics citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Letters in Mathematical Physics. 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

Overbaugh, J.: 24/7 isn’t the only way: A healthy work-life balance can enhance research. Nature. 477, 27–28 (2011)

A journal article with 2 authors

Gronewold, A.D., Stow, C.A.: Environment. Water loss from the Great Lakes. Science. 343, 1084–1085 (2014)

A journal article with 3 authors

Gorzelak, P., Głuchowski, E., Salamon, M.A.: Reassessing the improbability of a muscular crinoid stem. Sci. Rep. 4, 6049 (2014)

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Athanasiou, M., Smith, R., Liu, B., Wang, T.: Room temperature continuous-wave green lasing from an InGaN microdisk on silicon. Sci. Rep. 4, 7250 (2014)

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

DeRosa, D.F.: Foreign Exchange Operations. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ (2013)

An edited book

Ramanathan, S. ed: Thin Film Metal-Oxides: Fundamentals and Applications in Electronics and Energy. Springer US, Boston, MA (2010)

A chapter in an edited book

Cockburn, D., Kobti, Z.: Agent Specialization in Complex Social Swarms. In: Lim, C.P., Jain, L.C., and Dehuri, S. (eds.) Innovations in Swarm Intelligence. pp. 77–89. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg (2009)

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 Letters in Mathematical Physics.

Blog post

Fang, J.: 500-Million-Year-Old Fish Had First Signs of Jaws

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: Air Traffic Control: Status of FAA’s Modernization Program. U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC (1994)

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Norman, C.L.: Perceptions of non-traditional programs within Missouri school districts, (2015)

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

Williams, J.: The Teacher Learns She’s a Student, Too, (2017)

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	Letters in Mathematical Physics
Abbreviation	Lett. Math. Phys.
ISSN (print)	0377-9017
ISSN (online)	1573-0530
Scope	Mathematical Physics Statistical and Nonlinear Physics