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 reference managers.
BibTeX	BibTeX styles 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

Gottfried K. Matter all in the mind. Nature. 2002;419(6903):117.

A journal article with 2 authors

Richardson E, Marone C. Geophysics. What triggers tremor? Science. 2008;319(5860):166-167.

A journal article with 3 authors

Selje N, Simon M, Brinkhoff T. A newly discovered Roseobacter cluster in temperate and polar oceans. Nature. 2004;427(6973):445-448.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Johnsen A, Andersen V, Sunding C, Lifjeld JT. Female bluethroats enhance offspring immunocompetence through extra-pair copulations. Nature. 2000;406(6793):296-299.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Schumacher L. Divine Illumination. Wiley-Blackwell; 2011.

An edited book

Orchiston W, ed. The New Astronomy: Opening the Electromagnetic Window and Expanding Our View of Planet Earth: A Meeting to Honor Woody Sullivan on His 60th Birthday. Vol 334. Springer Netherlands; 2005.

A chapter in an edited book

de Granville C, Wang D, Southerland J, Fagg AH, Platt R. Grasping Affordances: Learning to Connet vission to Hand Action. In: Sukhatme G, ed. The Path to Autonomous Robots: Essays in Honor of George A. Bekey. Springer US; 2009:1-22.

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

Taub B. Hallucinogenic Amazonian Medicine Stimulates Generation Of New Brain Cells. IFLScience. June 30, 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. Federal-Aid Highways: FHWA Has Improved Its Risk Management Approach, but Needs to Improve Its Oversight of Project Costs. U.S. Government Printing Office; 2009.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Hoch VA. The Effects of Systematic Reinforcement on Academic Performance in Precision Teaching: An Investigation of Acquisition, Retention, and Endurance. Doctoral dissertation. University of South Florida; 2014.

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

Kelly D. IN SHORT: FICTION. New York Times. August 6, 1995:720.

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
ISSN (online)	2473-4209
Scope	General Medicine