How to format your references using the Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications. 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]

T.V. Padma, Strength in numbers, Nature 436 (2005) 492–493.

A journal article with 2 authors

[1]

P. Van Roy, D.E.G. Briggs, A giant Ordovician anomalocaridid, Nature 473 (2011) 510–513.

A journal article with 3 authors

[1]

J. Chen, T. Rashid, G. Feng, Esterase in imported fire ants, Solenopsis invicta and S. richteri (Hymenoptera: Formicidae): activity, kinetics and variation, Sci. Rep. 4 (2014) 7112.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

[1]

D.W. Austin, M.S. Allen, J.M. McCollum, R.D. Dar, J.R. Wilgus, G.S. Sayler, N.F. Samatova, C.D. Cox, M.L. Simpson, Gene network shaping of inherent noise spectra, Nature 439 (2006) 608–611.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

[1]

D. Bonneau, A. Fatu, D. Souchet, Hydrodynamic Bearings, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ, 2014.

An edited book

[1]

A. Barros, D. Grigori, N.C. Narendra, H.K. Dam, eds., Service-Oriented Computing: 13th International Conference, ICSOC 2015, Goa, India, November 16-19, 2015, Proceedings, Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, 2015.

A chapter in an edited book

[1]

E. Homsirikamol, P. Morawiecki, M. Rogawski, M. Srebrny, Security Margin Evaluation of SHA-3 Contest Finalists through SAT-Based Attacks, in: A. Cortesi, N. Chaki, K. Saeed, S. Wierzchoń (Eds.), Computer Information Systems and Industrial Management: 11th IFIP TC 8 International Conference, CISIM 2012, Venice, Italy, September 26-28, 2012. Proceedings, Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, 2012: pp. 56–67.

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 Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications.

Blog post

[1]

J. O`Callaghan, Possible Cure Found For Rare “Stone Man” Disease That Turns Muscle To Bone, IFLScience (2015).

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, Motor Vehicle Safety: NHTSA’s Ability to Detect and Recall Defective Replacement Crash Parts Is Limited, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC, 2001.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

[1]

M.D. Marroquin Salvador, Hypervelocity Impact of Spherical Aluminum 2017-T4 Projectiles on Aluminum 6061-T6 Multi-Layered Sheets, Doctoral dissertation, Mississippi State University, 2017.

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]

J.R. Oestreich, Among the Dictators and Commandants Are Sopranos and Baritones, New York Times (2016) C2.

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	Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications
Abbreviation	Physica A
ISSN (print)	0378-4371
Scope	Statistics and Probability Condensed Matter Physics