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

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

F. M. Richter, Isotope fractionation in silicate melts by thermal diffusion, Nature 472, E1; discussion E2 (2011).

A journal article with 2 authors

[1]

C. Adrain and S. J. Martin, Cell biology. Double knockout blow for caspases, Science 311, 785 (2006).

A journal article with 3 authors

[1]

A. D. S. Bala, M. W. Spitzer, and T. T. Takahashi, Prediction of auditory spatial acuity from neural images on the owl’s auditory space map, Nature 424, 771 (2003).

A journal article with 4 or more authors

[1]

K. M. Kendrick, A. P. da Costa, A. E. Leigh, M. R. Hinton, and J. W. Peirce, Sheep don’t forget a face, Nature 414, 165 (2001).

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

[1]

H. You, X. Jianjuan, and G. Xin, Radar Data Processing with Applications (John Wiley &;#38; Sons Singapore Pte. Ltd, Singapore, 2016).

An edited book

[1]

L. Gorb, V. Kuz’min, and E. Muratov, editors , Application of Computational Techniques in Pharmacy and Medicine, Vol. 17 (Springer Netherlands, Dordrecht, 2014).

A chapter in an edited book

[1]

G. Wersényi, Auditory Representations of a Graphical User Interface for a Better Human-Computer Interaction, in Auditory Display: 6th International Symposium, CMMR/ICAD 2009, Copenhagen, Denmark, May 18-22, 2009. Revised Papers, edited by S. Ystad, M. Aramaki, R. Kronland-Martinet, and K. Jensen (Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, 2010), pp. 80–102.

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 Research.

Blog post

[1]

E. Andrew, Printable Solar Cells One Step Closer To Reaching The Shelves, https://www.iflscience.com/technology/printable-solar-cells-one-step-closer-reaching-shelves/.

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, Business Modernization: Disciplined Processes Needed to Better Manage NASA’s Integrated Financial Management Program, No. GAO-04-118, 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]

K. M. Alexandre, Identifying Mechanisms Regulating Wnt Signaling during Postembryonic Development, Doctoral dissertation, University of North Carolina, 2009.

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. Corkery and M. W. Walsh, Puerto Rico Message: An Easy Bet Might Lose, New York Times B1 (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 Research
ISSN (online)	2643-1564
Scope