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]

Dickson B J 2008 Wired for sex: the neurobiology of Drosophila mating decisions Science 322 904–9

A journal article with 2 authors

[1]

Hegde D and Mowery D C 2008 Research funding. Politics and funding in the U.S. public biomedical R&D system Science 322 1797–8

A journal article with 3 authors

[1]

Chen M, Wei L and Liu Y 2014 Motor preparation attenuates neural variability and beta-band LFP in parietal cortex Sci. Rep. 4 6809

A journal article with 99 or more authors

[1]

Szabó P, Scheuring I, Czárán T and Szathmáry E 2002 In silico simulations reveal that replicators with limited dispersal evolve towards higher efficiency and fidelity Nature 420 340–3

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

[1]

Aksamija A 2016 Integrating Innovation in Architecture (Oxford, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd)

An edited book

[1]

Gaaloul K, Schmidt R, Nurcan S, Guerreiro S and Ma Q 2015 Enterprise, Business-Process and Information Systems Modeling: 16th International Conference, BPMDS 2015, 20th International Conference, EMMSAD 2015, Held at CAiSE 2015, Stockholm, Sweden, June 8-9, 2015, Proceedings vol 214 (Cham: Springer International Publishing)

A chapter in an edited book

[1]

Pereira Á S and Lains P 2012 From an Agrarian Society to a Knowledge Economy? The Rising Importance of Education to the Portuguese Economy, 1950–2009 Higher Education in Portugal 1974-2009: A Nation, a Generation ed G Neave and A Amaral (Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands) pp 109–34

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]

Luntz S 2014 Awesome Video Shows Sponges “Breathing” Out Dye 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 1990 Truck Safety: States’ Progress in Testing and Licensing Commercial Drivers (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]

Vu M H 2010 Efficiency of pair-wise and multiple alignment algorithms in computational biology 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]

Chira S and Alcindor Y 2017 Defiant Yet Jubilant Voices Flood U.S. Cities 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