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

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

D. Grünbaum, Ecology. Why Did You Lévy?, Science 332, 1514 (2011).

A journal article with 2 authors

[1]

A. Hashmi and J. Hong, Metal Free Half Metallicity in 2D System: Structural and Magnetic Properties of g-C4N3 on BN, Sci. Rep. 4, 4374 (2014).

A journal article with 3 authors

[1]

A. Mizutani, J. S. Chahl, and M. V. Srinivasan, Insect Behaviour: Motion Camouflage in Dragonflies, Nature 423, 604 (2003).

A journal article with 4 or more authors

[1]

G. Clarke, R. A. Collins, B. R. Leavitt, D. F. Andrews, M. R. Hayden, C. J. Lumsden, and R. R. McInnes, A One-Hit Model of Cell Death in Inherited Neuronal Degenerations, Nature 406, 195 (2000).

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

[1]

R. Cochetti, Mobile Satellite Communications Handbook (John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ, 2014).

An edited book

[1]

R. Zeng, editor , Graphics-Sequenced Interpretation of ECG, 1st ed. 2016 (Springer, Singapore, 2016).

A chapter in an edited book

[1]

S. Débarbat, Strasbourg Observatory: A Breeding Place for French Astronomical Instrumentation in the 20TH Century, in The Multinational History of Strasbourg Astronomical Observatory, edited by A. Heck (Springer Netherlands, Dordrecht, 2005), pp. 133–151.

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 D.

Blog post

[1]

S. Luntz, Brain Injury Releases Astonishing Mathematical Powers, https://www.iflscience.com/brain/brain-injury-releases-astonishing-mathematical-powers/.

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, Research and Development: Counterdrug Technology Assessment Center’s Process for Funding Projects, No. AIMD-99-277R, U.S. Government Printing Office, 1999.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

[1]

J. R. Parsons, Throwing a Wrench in the Translational Machinery: Discovery of RNA Ligands by Fluorescence Techniques, Doctoral dissertation, University of California San Diego, 2010.

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]

M. Kelly, Clinton Myth of Nonideological Politics Stumbles, New York Times 126 (1993).

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 D
ISSN (print)	1550-7998
ISSN (online)	1550-2368
Scope	Nuclear and High Energy Physics

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