How to format your references using the Physics Letters A citation style

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

[1]

P. Hedström, Sociology. Experimental macro sociology: predicting the next best seller, Science 311 (2006) 786–787.

A journal article with 2 authors

[1]

S. Teasley, S. Wolinsky, Communication. Scientific collaborations at a distance, Science 292 (2001) 2254–2255.

A journal article with 3 authors

[1]

C. Schröter, K. Kosma, T. Schultz, CRASY: mass- or electron-correlated rotational alignment spectroscopy, Science 333 (2011) 1011–1015.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

[1]

S.A. Astakhov, A.D. Burbanks, S. Wiggins, D. Farrelly, Chaos-assisted capture of irregular moons, Nature 423 (2003) 264–267.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

[1]

D. Bonneau, A. Fatu, D. Souchet, Hydrodynamic Bearings, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ, 2014.

An edited book

[1]

R. Lee, ed., Software Engineering, Artificial Intelligence, Networking and Parallel/Distributed Computing, Springer International Publishing, Heidelberg, 2013.

A chapter in an edited book

[1]

T. Mansi, B. André, M. Lynch, M. Sermesant, H. Delingette, Y. Boudjemline, N. Ayache, Virtual Pulmonary Valve Replacement Interventions with a Personalised Cardiac Electromechanical Model, in: N. Magnenat-Thalmann, J.J. Zhang, D.D. Feng (Eds.), Recent Advances in the 3D Physiological Human, Springer, London, 2009: pp. 75–90.

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 Letters A.

Blog post

[1]

S. Luntz, Spacetime Foam Discovery Proves Einstein Right, IFLScience (2015). https://www.iflscience.com/space/if-spacetime-has-bubbles-theyre-smaller-we-thought/ (accessed October 30, 2018).

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, The Excepted Service: A Research Profile, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC, 1997.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

[1]

J. Lorentz, The effect of requirements prioritization on avionics system conceptual design, Doctoral dissertation, George Washington University, 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]

B. Mueller, N. Schweber, Driver Arrested After Bus Fatally Strikes Pedestrian, New York Times (2015) A24.

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	Physics Letters A
Abbreviation	Phys. Lett. A
ISSN (print)	0375-9601
Scope	General Physics and Astronomy