How to format your references using the Physics of Life Reviews citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Physics of Life Reviews. 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]

Adami C. Evolution. Reducible complexity. Science 2006;312:61–3.

A journal article with 2 authors

[1]

Youle RJ, van der Bliek AM. Mitochondrial fission, fusion, and stress. Science 2012;337:1062–5.

A journal article with 3 authors

[1]

He W, Cowin P, Stokes DL. Untangling desmosomal knots with electron tomography. Science 2003;302:109–13.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

[1]

Storch K-F, Lipan O, Leykin I, Viswanathan N, Davis FC, Wong WH, et al. Extensive and divergent circadian gene expression in liver and heart. Nature 2002;417:78–83.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

[1]

Singh MP, Huhns MN. Service-Oriented Computing. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd; 2006.

An edited book

[1]

Foulkes WD, Cooney KA, editors. Male Reproductive Cancers: Epidemiology, Pathology and Genetics. New York, NY: Springer; 2010.

A chapter in an edited book

[1]

Peng R-H, Xiong A-S, Xue Y, Fu X-Y, Gao F, Zhao W, et al. A Profile of Ring-hydroxylating Oxygenases that Degrade Aromatic Pollutants. In: Whitacre DM, editor. Reviews of Environmental Contamination and Toxicology Volume 206, New York, NY: Springer; 2010, p. 65–94.

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 of Life Reviews.

Blog post

[1]

Andrew D. Science-Backed Ways To Improve Your Wi-Fi Signal At Home. IFLScience 2015.

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. GAO Work Related to ESEA of 1965. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 1994.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

[1]

Pulsifer JE. Learning from the Uighurs: Correcting Inadequate Due Process in Terrorist Financing Sanction Regimes. Doctoral dissertation. George Washington University, 2012.

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]

Crow K. Disaster? You Call This a Disaster? New Yorkers Rank Last in Plans. New York Times 2003:145.

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 of Life Reviews
Abbreviation	Phys. Life Rev.
ISSN (print)	1571-0645
Scope	General Agricultural and Biological Sciences Artificial Intelligence General Physics and Astronomy

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