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

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Physical Review B. 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 T. Thulborn, “Comment on ‘Ascent of dinosaurs linked to an iridium anomaly at the Triassic-Jurassic boundary,’” Science 301(5630), 169; author reply 169 (2003).

A journal article with 2 authors

¹ P.J.E. Peebles, and W.G. Unruh, “Obituary: John Wheeler (1911-2008),” Nature 453(7191), 50 (2008).

A journal article with 3 authors

¹ F. Hu, W. Luo, and M. Hong, “Mechanisms of proton conduction and gating in influenza M2 proton channels from solid-state NMR,” Science 330(6003), 505–508 (2010).

A journal article with 4 or more authors

¹ N.S. Sung, J.I. Gordon, G.D. Rose, E.D. Getzoff, S.J. Kron, D. Mumford, J.N. Onuchic, N.F. Scherer, D.L. Sumners, and N.J. Kopell, “Science education. Educating future scientists,” Science 301(5639), 1485 (2003).

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

¹ B. Homès, Fundamentals of Software Testing (John Wiley & Sons, Inc, Hoboken, NJ, 2012).

An edited book

¹ Y. Luo, Economics of Database-Assisted Spectrum Sharing (Springer International Publishing, Cham, 2016).

A chapter in an edited book

¹ R.C. Rosen, and V. Kupelian, “Epidemiology of Erectile Dysfunction and Key Risk Factors,” in Contemporary Treatment of Erectile Dysfunction: A Clinical Guide, edited by T.S. Köhler and K.T. McVary, (Springer International Publishing, Cham, 2016), pp. 45–56.

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 B.

Blog post

¹ T. Hale, “How To Create Your Own Ecosystem In A Bottle,” 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, Joint Strike Fighter Acquisition: Managing Competing Pressures Is Critical to Achieving Program Goals (U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC, 2003).

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

¹ H.L. Mosbacker, Control of Electrical Transport Mechanisms at Metal-Zinc Oxide Interfaces by Subsurface Defect Engineering with Remote Plasma Treatment, Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University, 2008.

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 K. Feeney, “Cupcakes a Chicken Can Love,” New York Times, NJ12 (2007).

In-text citations

References should be cited in the text by sequential numbers in superscript:

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 B
Abbreviation	Phys. Rev. B Condens. Matter Mater. Phys.
ISSN (print)	1098-0121
ISSN (online)	1550-235x
Scope	Electronic, Optical and Magnetic Materials Condensed Matter Physics