How to format your references using the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society 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

Shelly DR. 2010 Migrating tremors illuminate complex deformation beneath the seismogenic San Andreas fault. Nature 463, 648–652.

A journal article with 2 authors

Dove CJ, Straker LC. 2012 Comment on ‘A diverse assemblage of Late Cretaceous dinosaur and bird feathers from Canadian amber’. Science 335, 796; author reply 796.

A journal article with 3 authors

Hurrell JW, Kushnir Y, Visbeck M. 2001 Climate. The North Atlantic oscillation. Science 291, 603–605.

A journal article with 11 or more authors

Shankaran V, Ikeda H, Bruce AT, White JM, Swanson PE, Old LJ, Schreiber RD. 2001 IFNgamma and lymphocytes prevent primary tumour development and shape tumour immunogenicity. Nature 410, 1107–1111.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Diamond D. 2015 Trading as a Business. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

An edited book

Müller VC, editor. 2013 Philosophy and Theory of Artificial Intelligence. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer.

A chapter in an edited book

d’Andréa-Novel B, De Lara M. 2013 Stability of an Equilibrium Point. In Control Theory for Engineers: A Primer (ed M De Lara), pp. 71–95. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer.

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 Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A.

Blog post

Andrews R. 2015 King Penguins Adversely Affected By Climate Extremes. IFLScience.

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. 1998 District of Columbia Public Schools: Status of Fiscal Year 1998 Roof Projects.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Chepete P. 2008 Modeling of the factors affecting mathematical achievement of Form 1 students in Botswana based on the 2003 Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study. Doctoral dissertation, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN.

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

Greenhouse L. 2007 Justices to Revisit Thorny Issue of Sentencing Guidelines in First Cases After Recess. New York Times, 20 February. , A15.

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	Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A
Abbreviation	Philos. Trans. A Math. Phys. Eng. Sci.
ISSN (print)	1364-503X
ISSN (online)	1471-2962
Scope	General Engineering General Mathematics General Physics and Astronomy