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

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

S. Leutgeb, Neuroscience. Detailed differences, Science. 319 (2008) 1623–1624.

A journal article with 2 authors

[1]

M. Utz, J. Landers, Chemistry. Magnetic resonance and microfluidics, Science. 330 (2010) 1056–1058.

A journal article with 3 authors

[1]

H. Gawronski, M. Mehlhorn, K. Morgenstern, Imaging phonon excitation with atomic resolution, Science. 319 (2008) 930–933.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

[1]

G. Rui, D.C. Abeysinghe, R.L. Nelson, Q. Zhan, Demonstration of beam steering via dipole-coupled plasmonic spiral antenna, Sci. Rep. 3 (2013) 2237.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

[1]

D. Paret, Design Constraints for NFC Devices, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ, 2016.

An edited book

[1]

J.L. Matson, F. Andrasik, M.L. Matson, eds., Assessing Childhood Psychopathology and Developmental Disabilities, Springer, New York, NY, 2009.

A chapter in an edited book

[1]

M. Lonquety, Z. Lacroix, J. Chomilier, Evaluation of the Stability of Folding Nucleus upon Mutation, in: M. Chetty, A. Ngom, S. Ahmad (Eds.), Pattern Recognition in Bioinformatics: Third IAPR International Conference, PRIB 2008, Melbourne, Australia, October 15-17, 2008. Proceedings, Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, 2008: pp. 54–65.

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 B.

Blog post

[1]

E. Andrew, Blood Donors In Sweden Get A Text Whenever They Save A Life, IFLScience. (2015). https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/blood-donors-sweden-get-text-whenever-their-blood-flows-another-human/ (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 Unit Status and Identity Report (UNITREP) System--What It Does and Does Not Measure, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC, 1984.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

[1]

A.M. Martinez, Moving in foster care: Voices of adults who experienced multiple foster care placements in childhood, Doctoral dissertation, California State University, Long Beach, 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]

J. Barron, The Public Face and Voice of Crazy Eddie Recalls the Real One, New York Times. (2016) 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 B
Abbreviation	Phys. Lett. B
ISSN (print)	0370-2693
Scope	Nuclear and High Energy Physics

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