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

Schilling G. 2009 Spain unveils its eye on the sky. Nature 460, 674.

A journal article with 2 authors

Jakob M, Hilaire J. 2015 Climate science: Unburnable fossil-fuel reserves. Nature 517, 150–152.

A journal article with 3 authors

Furlong KP, Lay T, Ammon CJ. 2009 A great earthquake rupture across a rapidly evolving three-plate boundary. Science 324, 226–229.

A journal article with 11 or more authors

Kraemer DJM, Macrae CN, Green AE, Kelley WM. 2005 Musical imagery: sound of silence activates auditory cortex. Nature 434, 158.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Hewitt A. 2016 Construction Claims & Responses. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

An edited book

Camarinha-Matos LM, Tomic S, Graça P, editors. 2013 Technological Innovation for the Internet of Things: 4th IFIP WG 5.5/SOCOLNET Doctoral Conference on Computing, Electrical and Industrial Systems, DoCEIS 2013, Costa de Caparica, Portugal, April 15-17, 2013. Proceedings. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer.

A chapter in an edited book

Joussen AM, Adamis AP. 2007 Inflammation as a Stimulus for Vascular Leakage and Proliferation. In Retinal Vascular Disease (eds AM Joussen, TW Gardner, B Kirchhof, SJ Ryan), pp. 97–107. 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 Work On Devastating Parasitic Diseases Wins Nobel Prize. IFLScience. See https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/work-devastating-parasitic-diseases-wins-nobel-prize/ (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. 1997 Social Security Administration: Internet Access to Personal Earnings and Benefits Information.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Lingley-Papadopoulos CA. 2008 Image analysis of Optical Coherence Tomography images of the urinary bladder for the recognition of bladder cancer. Doctoral dissertation, George Washington University, Washington, DC.

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

Vecsey G. 2010 Super Bowl Champion Jets Ignited A Sporting Revival in the Big Town. New York Times, 24 January. , SP3.

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

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