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

Ohnaka M. 2004 Geophysics. Rupture in the laboratory. Science 303, 1788–1789.

A journal article with 2 authors

Tirlapur UK, König K. 2002 Targeted transfection by femtosecond laser. Nature 418, 290–291.

A journal article with 3 authors

Basu P, Qiu J, Powell K. 2008 Making a difference. Nature 455, 1002–1003.

A journal article with 11 or more authors

Lee TI, Causton HC, Holstege FC, Shen WC, Hannett N, Jennings EG, Winston F, Green MR, Young RA. 2000 Redundant roles for the TFIID and SAGA complexes in global transcription. Nature 405, 701–704.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Giannini F, Leuzzi G. 2005 Nonlinear Microwave Circuit Design. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

An edited book

Zivanovic MD. 2006 Multi-Arm Cooperating Robots: Dynamics and Control. Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands.

A chapter in an edited book

Peer S, Gruber H. 2008 Traumatic Nerve Lesions. In High-Resolution Sonography of the Peripheral Nervous System (eds S Peer, G Bodner), pp. 123–151. 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

Andrew E. 2015 How To Sail Through Space On Sunbeams – Solar Satellite Leads The Way. IFLScience. See https://www.iflscience.com/technology/how-sail-through-space-sunbeams-solar-satellite-leads-way/ (accessed on 30 October 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

Government Accountability Office. 2011 Business Systems Modernization: Internal Revenue Service’s Fiscal Year 2011 Expenditure Plan.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Arnold JK. 2015 An Ecological Model for Health Policy Review: The Integration of New Institutional and Public Choice Theory for Public Policy Assessment. Doctoral dissertation, Northcentral University, Scottsdale, AZ.

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

Novick SM. 2015 Turkey and Trimmings, Without Dishes to Do. New York Times, 22 November. , LI11.

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