How to format your references using the Physics in Medicine and Biology citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Physics in Medicine and Biology. 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

Nathan C 2004 Antibiotics at the crossroads Nature 431 899–902

A journal article with 2 authors

Strasser B J and Dubochet J 2005 Obituary: Eduard Kellenberger (1920-2004) Nature 433 817

A journal article with 3 authors

Poinar H, Kuch M and Pääbo S 2001 Molecular analyses of oral polio vaccine samples Science 292 743–4

A journal article with 99 or more authors

Field G D, Gauthier J L, Sher A, Greschner M, Machado T A, Jepson L H, Shlens J, Gunning D E, Mathieson K, Dabrowski W, Paninski L, Litke A M and Chichilnisky E J 2010 Functional connectivity in the retina at the resolution of photoreceptors Nature 467 673–7

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Quadbeck-Seeger H-J 2007 World of the Elements (Weinheim, Germany: Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA)

An edited book

Prade H and Richard G 2014 Computational Approaches to Analogical Reasoning: Current Trends vol 548 (Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer)

A chapter in an edited book

Qasim M, Hasan O, Elleuch M and Tahar S 2016 Formalization of Normal Random Variables in HOL Intelligent Computer Mathematics: 9th International Conference, CICM 2016, Bialystok, Poland, July 25-29, 2016, Proceedings Lecture Notes in Computer Science ed M Kohlhase, M Johansson, B Miller, L de Moura and F Tompa (Cham: Springer International Publishing) pp 44–59

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 Physics in Medicine and Biology.

Blog post

Hamilton K 2015 The Science of Meditation IFLScience Online: https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/science-meditation/

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

Government Accountability Office 1997 Education Programs: Information on Major Preschool, Elementary, and Secondary Education Programs (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office)

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Nelson A F 2014 Anxiety in the process of individuation. An in-depth psychological study Doctoral dissertation (Carpinteria, CA: Pacifica Graduate Institute)

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

Taylor K 2015 Principal Acknowledged Forging Answers on Tests for Students, Officials Say New York Times A20

In-text citations

References should be cited in the text by name and year in parentheses:

This sentence cites one reference (Nathan 2004).
This sentence cites two references (Nathan 2004, Strasser and Dubochet 2005).

Here are examples of in-text citations with multiple authors:

Two authors: (Strasser and Dubochet 2005)
Three or more authors: (Field et al 2010)

About the journal

Full journal title	Physics in Medicine and Biology
Abbreviation	Phys. Med. Biol.
ISSN (print)	0031-9155
ISSN (online)	1361-6560
Scope	Radiology Nuclear Medicine and imaging Radiological and Ultrasound Technology