How to format your references using the Physiological Reviews citation style

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

Rutter GA. Cell biology. Pancreas micromanages autophagy. Science 347: 826–827, 2015.

A journal article with 2 authors

Clausen J, Junge W. Detection of an intermediate of photosynthetic water oxidation. Nature 430: 480–483, 2004.

A journal article with 3 authors

Cremer S, Sledge MF, Heinze J. Chemical mimicry: male ants disguised by the queen’s bouquet. Nature 419: 897, 2002.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Mori Y, Chen T, Fujisawa T, Kobashi S, Ohno K, Yoshida S, Tago Y, Komai Y, Hata Y, Yoshioka Y. From cartoon to real time MRI: in vivo monitoring of phagocyte migration in mouse brain. Sci Rep 4: 6997, 2014.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

MacRoberts. MacRoberts on Scottish Construction Contracts. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, 2014.

An edited book

Makeham J, editor. Dao Companion to Neo-Confucian Philosophy. Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands, 2010.

A chapter in an edited book

Macleod AM. Coercion, Justice, and Democracy. In: Coercion and the State, edited by Reidy DA, Riker WJ. Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands, 2008, p. 63–75.

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 Physiological Reviews.

Blog post

Andrews R. Bronze Age Weapons And Stone Age Structures Discovered Beneath Scotland. IFLScience IFLScience: 2017.

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. DHS IT Contracting: Steps Taken to Enhance EAGLE II Small Business Opportunities, but Better Assessment Data Needed. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 2015.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Coggin LL. Creating discourses of possibility: Storying between the real and the imagined to negotiate rural lives in two elementary classrooms. Indiana University: 2014.

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

Lanchester J. How Economic Gobbledygook Divides Us. New York Times: MM18, 2016.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (2).
This sentence cites two references (2, 4).
This sentence cites four references (2, 4, 6, 8).

About the journal

Full journal title	Physiological Reviews
Abbreviation	Physiol. Rev.
ISSN (print)	0031-9333
ISSN (online)	1522-1210
Scope	Molecular Biology Physiology General Medicine Physiology (medical)