How to format your references using the Physical Communication citation style

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

P.M. Lieberman, Virology. Epstein-Barr virus turns 50, Science. 343 (2014) 1323–1325.

A journal article with 2 authors

[1]

D. Stellwagen, R.C. Malenka, Synaptic scaling mediated by glial TNF-alpha, Nature. 440 (2006) 1054–1059.

A journal article with 3 authors

[1]

J. Michael Beman, K.R. Arrigo, P.A. Matson, Agricultural runoff fuels large phytoplankton blooms in vulnerable areas of the ocean, Nature. 434 (2005) 211–214.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

[1]

H.-F. Zhang, Z. Yang, Z.-X. Wu, B.-H. Wang, T. Zhou, Braess’s paradox in epidemic game: better condition results in less payoff, Sci. Rep. 3 (2013) 3292.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

[1]

J.F. English, The Global Future of English Studies, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, Chichester, UK, 2012.

An edited book

[1]

J. Pérez Martín, A. Di Pietro, eds., Morphogenesis and Pathogenicity in Fungi, Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, 2012.

A chapter in an edited book

[1]

S.S. Bhojwani, P.K. Dantu, Tissue and Cell Culture, in: P.K. Dantu (Ed.), Plant Tissue Culture: An Introductory Text, Springer India, New Delhi, 2013: pp. 39–50.

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 Communication.

Blog post

[1]

S. Luntz, Bronze Age “World War Zero” Could Have Wiped Out A Mysterious Civilization, IFLScience. (2016).

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, Review of HEW Guidelines for Acquiring Automatic Data Processing Systems Under the Social Security Act, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC, 1979.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

[1]

J.N. Kolb, What’s professional development got to do with it? The value of lesson study in implementing the common core standards for mathematical practices, Doctoral dissertation, California State University, Long Beach, 2015.

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]

G. Vecsey, Valentine in Boston? That’s Entertainment, New York Times. (2011) B17.

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 Communication
ISSN (print)	1874-4907
Scope	Electrical and Electronic Engineering