How to format your references using the Physica Scripta citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Physica Scripta. 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	Find the style here: output styles overview
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]

Robel A 2015 Climate science: The long future of Antarctic melting Nature 526 327–8

A journal article with 2 authors

[1]

Bouchon M and Vallée M 2003 Observation of long supershear rupture during the magnitude 8.1 Kunlunshan earthquake Science 301 824–6

A journal article with 3 authors

[1]

Heimpel M, Aurnou J and Wicht J 2005 Simulation of equatorial and high-latitude jets on Jupiter in a deep convection model Nature 438 193–6

A journal article with 99 or more authors

[1]

Domack E, Duran D, Leventer A, Ishman S, Doane S, McCallum S, Amblas D, Ring J, Gilbert R and Prentice M 2005 Stability of the Larsen B ice shelf on the Antarctic Peninsula during the Holocene epoch Nature 436 681–5

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

[1]

Stanley W and Pamela B 2017 The Complete Guide to Fundraising Management (Hoboken, New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons, Inc)

An edited book

[1]

Zhang X, Wasserman H and Mano W 2016 China’s Media and Soft Power in Africa: Promotion and Perceptions (New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan US)

A chapter in an edited book

[1]

Wust J, Grund M and Plattner H 2015 Dynamic Query Prioritization for In-Memory Databases In Memory Data Management and Analysis: First and Second International Workshops, IMDM 2013, Riva del Garda, Italy, August 26, 2013, IMDM 2014, Hongzhou, China, September 1, 2014, Revised Selected Papers Lecture Notes in Computer Science ed A Jagatheesan, J Levandoski, T Neumann and A Pavlo (Cham: Springer International Publishing) pp 56–68

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 Scripta.

Blog post

[1]

Andrew E 2014 The Compound Behind All Those Stories About Red Wine Being Good For You 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

[1]

Government Accountability Office 1999 Year 2000 Computing Challenge: Estimated Costs, Planned Uses of Emergency Funding, and Future Implications (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office)

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

[1]

Powers K L 2012 Real-time video streaming: Impact on maternal anxiety and the maternal-infant bond Doctoral dissertation (Long Beach, CA: California State University, Long Beach)

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]

Walsh M W and Cooper M 2012 Gloomy Forecast for States, Even if Economy Rebounds New York Times A1

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 Scripta
Abbreviation	Phys. Scr.
ISSN (print)	0031-8949
ISSN (online)	1402-4896
Scope	Mathematical Physics Condensed Matter Physics Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics