How to format your references using the Reports on Progress in Physics citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Reports on Progress in Physics. 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]

Broer D J 2014 Applied physics: A new view on displays Nature 511 159–60

A journal article with 2 authors

[1]

Gaidos E J and Nimmo F 2000 Tectonics and water on Europa Nature 405 637

A journal article with 3 authors

[1]

Makovicky P J, Apesteguía S and Agnolín F L 2005 The earliest dromaeosaurid theropod from South America Nature 437 1007–11

A journal article with 99 or more authors

[1]

El Albani A, Bengtson S, Canfield D E, Bekker A, Macchiarelli R, Mazurier A, Hammarlund E U, Boulvais P, Dupuy J-J, Fontaine C, Fürsich F T, Gauthier-Lafaye F, Janvier P, Javaux E, Ossa F O, Pierson-Wickmann A-C, Riboulleau A, Sardini P, Vachard D, Whitehouse M and Meunier A 2010 Large colonial organisms with coordinated growth in oxygenated environments 2.1 Gyr ago Nature 466 100–4

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

[1]

Tms 2014 TMS 2014 Supplemental Proceedings (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.)

An edited book

[1]

Babuška R and Groen F C A 2010 Interactive Collaborative Information Systems vol 281 (Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer)

A chapter in an edited book

[1]

Pace J L, Hennrikus W L and Kocher M S 2014 Surgical Treatment of Patellar Instability in Skeletally Immature Athletes The Patellofemoral Joint in the Athlete ed R V West and A C Colvin (New York, NY: Springer) pp 59–75

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 Reports on Progress in Physics.

Blog post

[1]

Carpineti A 2015 Can Aspirin Stop Cancer Returning? 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 1983 Issues Concerning the National Materials Policy, Research and Development Act of 1980, Public Law 96-479 (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]

Camaya C 2015 Teachers’ perceptions of social skills instruction for children with autism spectrum disorders Doctoral dissertation (Phoenix, AZ: University of Phoenix)

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]

Rich N 2012 Forever and Ever New York Times MM32

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	Reports on Progress in Physics
Abbreviation	Rep. Prog. Phys.
ISSN (print)	0034-4885
ISSN (online)	1361-6633
Scope	General Physics and Astronomy