How to format your references using the Plasma Science and Technology citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Plasma Science and Technology. 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:

PaperpileThe citation style is built in and you can choose it in Settings > Citation Style or Paperpile > Citation Style in Google Docs.
EndNoteDownload the output style file
Mendeley, Zotero, Papers, and othersThe style is either built in or you can download a CSL file that is supported by most references management programs.
BibTeXBibTeX 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]
Koen D 2004 Nuts and bolts. Passing the interview Nature 429 112
A journal article with 2 authors
[1]
Sánchez I and Dynlacht B D 2014 Cell biology: Short RNAs and shortness of breath Nature 510 40–2
A journal article with 3 authors
[1]
Li C, de Grijs R and Deng L 2014 The exclusion of a significant range of ages in a massive star cluster Nature 516 367–9
A journal article with 99 or more authors
[1]
Erlandson J M, Rick T C, Braje T J, Casperson M, Culleton B, Fulfrost B, Garcia T, Guthrie D A, Jew N, Kennett D J, Moss M L, Reeder L, Skinner C, Watts J and Willis L 2011 Paleoindian seafaring, maritime technologies, and coastal foraging on California’s Channel Islands Science 331 1181–5

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book
[1]
Fraser J and Simkins B J 2009 Enterprise Risk Management (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.)
An edited book
[1]
Tremblay V J 2012 New Perspectives on Industrial Organization: With Contributions from Behavioral Economics and Game Theory ed C H Tremblay (New York, NY: Springer)
A chapter in an edited book
[1]
Le Naour C, Hoffman D C and Trubert D 2014 Fundamental and Experimental Aspects of Single Atom-at-a-Time Chemistry The Chemistry of Superheavy Elements ed M Schädel and D Shaughnessy (Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer) pp 241–60

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 Plasma Science and Technology.

Blog post
[1]
Andrew E 2013 What Have We Got To Lose?: A Brief History of Mass Extinction Events IFLScience

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 2007 Digital Television Transition: Preliminary Information on Initial Consumer Education Efforts (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office)

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation
[1]
Haneef N J 2009 A synthesized conceptual framework for the design of user interfaces of interactive information products Doctoral dissertation (Washington, DC: George Washington University)

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]
Barnard A 2017 Russia Says Deal Will Bar Americans From Flying in Most of Syria’s Airspace New York Times A9

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 titlePlasma Science and Technology
AbbreviationPlasma Sci. Technol.
ISSN (print)1009-0630
ScopeCondensed Matter Physics

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