How to format your references using the Phase Transitions citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Phase Transitions. 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

[1]

Dennis C. Stem-cell reverse angers Australian biologists. Nature. 2002;416(6876):4.

A journal article with 2 authors

[1]

Federman SR, Young ED. Comment on “Experimental test of self-shielding in vacuum ultraviolet photodissociation of CO.” Science. 2009;324(5934):1516; author reply 1516.

A journal article with 3 authors

[1]

Bortnik J, Thorne RM, Meredith NP. The unexpected origin of plasmaspheric hiss from discrete chorus emissions. Nature. 2008;452(7183):62–66.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

[1]

Julsgaard B, Sherson J, Cirac JI, et al. Experimental demonstration of quantum memory for light. Nature. 2004;432(7016):482–486.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

[1]

Moeller RR. Executive’s Guide to IT Governance. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.; 2013.

An edited book

[1]

Lepri S, editor. Thermal Transport in Low Dimensions: From Statistical Physics to Nanoscale Heat Transfer. Cham: Springer International Publishing; 2016.

A chapter in an edited book

[1]

Volkov M, Cornejo A, Lynch N, et al. Environment Characterization for Non-recontaminating Frontier-Based Robotic Exploration. In: Kinny D, Hsu JY-J, Governatori G, et al., editors. Agents in Principle, Agents in Practice: 14th International Conference, PRIMA 2011, Wollongong, Australia, November 16-18, 2011 Proceedings. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer; 2011. p. 19–35.

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 Phase Transitions.

Blog post

[1]

Fang J. Why Do Male Fruit Flies Have Humongous Sperm? [Internet]. IFLScience. IFLScience; 2016 [cited 2018 Oct 30]. Available from: https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/why-do-male-fruit-flies-have-humongous-sperm/.

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. Amtrak Safety: Amtrak Should Implement Minimum Safety Standards for Passenger Cars. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 1993. Report No.: RCED-93-196. .

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

[1]

Marjanovic SY. The Role of the Wiskott-Aldrich Syndrome Protein in Regulating T Cell Programmed Cell Death Mechanisms and Implications for Autoimmunity in the Wiskott-Aldrich Syndrome [Doctoral dissertation]. [Washington, DC]: George Washington University; 2016.

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]

Vecsey G. One Bowl That Counts And 34 Others. New York Times. 2010 Dec 10;B9.

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	Phase Transitions
Abbreviation	Phase Transitions
ISSN (print)	0141-1594
ISSN (online)	1029-0338
Scope	General Materials Science Instrumentation