How to format your references using the Physical Biology citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Physical Biology. 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]

Eisenberg L 2000 Seymour S. Kety (1915-2000) Nature 406 472

A journal article with 2 authors

[1]

Amini A and Cheng C 2013 Nature of hardness evolution in nanocrystalline NiTi shape memory alloys during solid-state phase transition Sci. Rep. 3 2476

A journal article with 3 authors

[1]

Watson E B, Thomas J B and Cherniak D J 2007 40Ar retention in the terrestrial planets Nature 449 299–304

A journal article with 99 or more authors

[1]

Zeng X, Goetz J A, Suber L M, Scott W J Jr, Schreiner C M and Robbins D J 2001 A freely diffusible form of Sonic hedgehog mediates long-range signalling Nature 411 716–20

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

[1]

Happer W, Jau Y-Y and Walker T 2010 Optically Pumped Atoms (Weinheim, Germany: Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA)

An edited book

[1]

Krötzsch M and Straccia U 2012 Web Reasoning and Rule Systems: 6th International Conference, RR 2012, Vienna, Austria, September 10-12, 2012. Proceedings vol 7497 (Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer)

A chapter in an edited book

[1]

Luks A M, Glenny R W and Robertson H T 2013 Conducting a Cardiopulmonary Exercise Test Introduction to Cardiopulmonary Exercise Testing ed R W Glenny and H T Robertson (New York, NY: Springer) pp 37–51

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 Physical Biology.

Blog post

[1]

Hamilton K 2017 Explainer: Why Do We Get Butterflies In Our Stomachs? 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 2009 Surface Transportation: Efforts to Address Highway Congestion through Real-Time Traffic Information Systems Are Expanding but Face Implementation Challenges (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]

Johnson A S 2017 Fatigue Behavior and Microstructure of Direct Laser Deposited Inconel 718 Alloy Doctoral dissertation (Mississippi State, MS: Mississippi State University)

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]

Vecsey G 2010 Bradley Logs Miles Before World Cup New York Times B18

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	Physical Biology
Abbreviation	Phys. Biol.
ISSN (print)	1478-3967
ISSN (online)	1478-3975
Scope	Biophysics Cell Biology Molecular Biology Structural Biology