How to format your references using the Medical Physics citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Medical 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	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

T.P. Lodge, Materials science. A unique platform for materials design, Science 321(5885), 50–51 (2008).

A journal article with 2 authors

H. Elderfield and R.E. Rickaby, Oceanic Cd/P ratio and nutrient utilization in the glacial Southern Ocean, Nature 405(6784), 305–310 (2000).

A journal article with 3 authors

P.A. Pevzner, S. Kim, and J. Ng, Comment on “Protein sequences from mastodon and Tyrannosaurus rex revealed by mass spectrometry,” Science 321(5892), 1040; author reply 1040 (2008).

A journal article with 7 or more authors

L.P. Lim, M.E. Glasner, S. Yekta, C.B. Burge, and D.P. Bartel, Vertebrate microRNA genes, Science 299(5612), 1540 (2003).

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

T.R. Bielecki, D. Brigo, and F. Patras, Credit Risk Frontiers (John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ, 2011).

An edited book

A. Agrawal (ed.), Patient Safety: A Case-Based Comprehensive Guide (Springer, New York, NY, 2014).

A chapter in an edited book

A.N. Lee and Y. Nie, The ‘Why’ and ‘How’ of Engaging Parents in Their Children’s Science Learning in Informal Contexts: Theoretical Perspectives and Applications, in Science Education in East Asia: Pedagogical Innovations and Research-informed Practices, edited by M.S. Khine (Springer International Publishing, Cham, 2015), pp. 93–121.

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 Medical Physics.

Blog post

R. Andrews, How Many Calories Does Having Sex Really Burn?, IFLScience (2016).

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, Information Technology: Opportunities Exist to Improve Management of DOD’s Electronic Health Record Initiative (U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC, 2010).

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

J.O. Griess, A canine audience: The effect of Animal-Assisted Therapy on reading progress among students identified with learning disabilities (Doctoral dissertation, University of South Florida, 2010).

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

L. Greenhouse, Vermont Campaign Limits Get Cool Reception at Court, New York Times A14 (2006).

In-text citations

References should be cited in the text by sequential numbers in superscript:

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	Medical Physics
Abbreviation	Med. Phys.
ISSN (print)	0094-2405
Scope	General Medicine