How to format your references using the Nuclear Physics, Section A citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Nuclear Physics, Section A. 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

[1]

R. Cocroft, An ecologist marvels at animals that learn to eavesdrop, Nature 460 (2009) 439.

A journal article with 2 authors

[1]

B. Stevens, S. Bony, Climate change. What are climate models missing?, Science 340 (2013) 1053–1054.

A journal article with 3 authors

[1]

P.-S. Liang, T.S. Park, J.-Y. Yoon, Rapid and reagentless detection of microbial contamination within meat utilizing a smartphone-based biosensor, Sci. Rep. 4 (2014) 5953.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

[1]

S. Brönnimann, J. Luterbacher, J. Staehelin, T.M. Svendby, G. Hansen, T. Svenøe, Extreme climate of the global troposphere and stratosphere in 1940-42 related to El Niño, Nature 431 (2004) 971–974.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

[1]

Center for Chemical Process Safety, Guidelines for Managing Process Safety Risks During Organizational Change, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ, 2013.

An edited book

[1]

A. Pelc, M. Raynal, eds., Structural Information and Communication Complexity: 12 International Colloquium, SIROCCO 2005, Mont Saint-Michel, France, May 24-26, 2005. Proceedings, Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, 2005.

A chapter in an edited book

[1]

L.F. DiMauro, C.A. Roedig, Strong-Field Atomic Physics in the X-ray Regime, in: K. Yamanouchi, G.G. Paulus, D. Mathur (Eds.), Progress in Ultrafast Intense Laser Science: Volume X, Springer International Publishing, Cham, 2014: pp. 65–76.

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 Nuclear Physics, Section A.

Blog post

[1]

S. Luntz, Lightning Archaeology Measures Bolts’ Power, IFLScience (2016). https://www.iflscience.com/physics/lightning-archaeology-measures-bolts-power/ (accessed October 30, 2018).

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, Gas Pipeline Safety: Preliminary Observations on the Implementation of the Integrity Management Program, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC, 2006.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

[1]

C. Ramirez, Perceived efficacy of the O*NET Skills Search Tool among individuals with high functioning autism, Doctoral dissertation, California State University, Long Beach, 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

[1]

L. Greenhouse, PRISONERS GAIN IN SUIT ATTACKING LETHAL INJECTION, New York Times (2006) A1.

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	Nuclear Physics, Section A
Abbreviation	Nucl. Phys. A
ISSN (print)	0375-9474
Scope	Nuclear and High Energy Physics