How to format your references using the Physical Review A citation style

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

H. Gursky, X-ray astronomy-40 years on, Science 297, 1485 (2002).

A journal article with 2 authors

[1]

H. D. Scher and E. E. Martin, Timing and climatic consequences of the opening of Drake Passage, Science 312, 428 (2006).

A journal article with 3 authors

[1]

M. J. Palmer, F. Fukuyama, and D. A. Relman, SCIENCE GOVERNANCE. A more systematic approach to biological risk, Science 350, 1471 (2015).

A journal article with 4 or more authors

[1]

H. Yu, H. Zhang, Y. Wang, Z. Wang, J. Wang, and V. Petrov, Generation of crystal-structure transverse patterns via a self-frequency-doubling laser, Sci. Rep. 3, 1085 (2013).

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

[1]

J. C. Das, Power System Harmonics and Passive Filter Designs (John Wiley & Sons, Inc, Hoboken, NJ, 2015).

An edited book

[1]

A. M. Puzrin, Geomechanics of Failures (Springer Netherlands, Dordrecht, 2010).

A chapter in an edited book

[1]

A. C. Staver, W. D. E. Jong, and D. Kaimowitz, NICARAGUA’S FRONTIER: THE BOSAWAS BIOSPHERE RESERVE, in Extreme Conflict and Tropical Forests, edited by W. D. Jong, D. Donovan, and K.-I. Abe (Springer Netherlands, Dordrecht, 2007), pp. 57–74.

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 Review A.

Blog post

[1]

E. Andrew, How To Protect Planes And Passengers From Explosions On The Surface Of The Sun, (unpublished).

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, College Completion: Additional Efforts Could Help Education with Its Completion Goals, No. GAO-03-568, U.S. Government Printing Office, 2003.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

[1]

J. L. Little, The Effects of a Financial Literacy Intervention on Teachers’ Financial Literacy, Awareness, and Advocacy, Doctoral dissertation, University of Phoenix, 2014.

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. Williams, The Left Bank, New York Times BR4 (2017).

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 Review A
ISSN (print)	2469-9926
ISSN (online)	2469-9934
Scope