How to format your references using the Physics of Plasmas citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Physics of Plasmas. 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 R.N. Clayton, “Planetary science: Meteorites and their parent asteroids,” Science 313(5794), 1743–1744 (2006).

A journal article with 2 authors

¹ L. Stixrude, and D.R. Peacor, “First-principles study of illite-smectite and implications for clay mineral systems,” Nature 420(6912), 165–168 (2002).

A journal article with 3 authors

¹ J. Fischer, J. Baumgartner, and C. Marschner, “Synthesis and structure of sila-adamantane,” Science 310(5749), 825 (2005).

A journal article with 4 or more authors

¹ Y. Kang, O. Kuybeda, P.W. de Waal, S. Mukherjee, N. Van Eps, P. Dutka, X.E. Zhou, A. Bartesaghi, S. Erramilli, T. Morizumi, X. Gu, Y. Yin, P. Liu, Y. Jiang, X. Meng, G. Zhao, K. Melcher, O.P. Ernst, A.A. Kossiakoff, S. Subramaniam, and H.E. Xu, “Publisher Correction: Cryo-EM structure of human rhodopsin bound to an inhibitory G protein,” Nature 561(7724), E44 (2018).

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

¹ D. Zelterman, Discrete Distributions: Applications in the Health Sciences (John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, Chichester, UK, 2005).

An edited book

¹ J. Sun, W. Jiao, H. Wu, and M. Lu, editors , China Satellite Navigation Conference (CSNC) 2014 Proceedings: Volume III (Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, 2014).

A chapter in an edited book

¹ V.E. Kagan, K.M.K. Rao, E.R. Kisin, S.-H. Young, T. Meighan, A.R. Murray, Y.Y. Tyurina, V. Castranova, and A.A. Shvedova, “Pulmonary Effects of Single-Walled Carbon Nanotubes: Inflammatory Response, Oxidative Stress/Signaling, and Recognition by Macrophages,” in Nanotechnology – Toxicological Issues and Environmental Safety and Environmental Safety, edited by P.P. Simeonova, N. Opopol, and M.I. Luster, (Springer Netherlands, Dordrecht, 2007), pp. 65–75.

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 Plasmas.

Blog post

¹ J. Fang, “New Horned Dino Sported Gnarly Headgear with a Curly Frill,” 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, Relocation of Space Shuttle Major Modification Work (U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC, 2002).

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

¹ Z. Quashie, Issues with Care Provided by Direct Care Workers: A Case Study, Doctoral dissertation, Capella University, 2017.

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 N. Casey, and E. MacKENNA, “Doomed Jet’s Pilot Said to Have Reported ‘Fuel Emergency,’” New York Times, A10 (2016).

In-text citations

References should be cited in the text by sequential numbers in superscript:

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 Plasmas
Abbreviation	Phys. Plasmas
ISSN (print)	1070-664X
ISSN (online)	1089-7674
Scope	Condensed Matter Physics