How to format your references using the Reviews in Physics citation style

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

C. Lamborg, Geochemistry. A new twist for mercury, Science 318 (2007) 402–403.

A journal article with 2 authors

[1]

B.L. Bloodgood, B.L. Sabatini, Neuronal activity regulates diffusion across the neck of dendritic spines, Science 310 (2005) 866–869.

A journal article with 3 authors

[1]

P.E. Ahlberg, J.A. Clack, H. Blom, The axial skeleton of the Devonian tetrapod Ichthyostega, Nature 437 (2005) 137–140.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

[1]

H. Gong, Y. Yang, X. Chen, D. Zhao, X. Chen, Y. Chen, M. Yan, Q. Li, M. Qiu, Gold nanoparticle transfer through photothermal effects in a metamaterial absorber by nanosecond laser, Sci. Rep. 4 (2014) 6080.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

[1]

A.M. Ansons, H. Davis, Diagnosis and Management of Ocular Motility Disorders, Blackwell Science Ltd, Oxford, UK, 2008.

An edited book

[1]

D. Karagiannis, H.C. Mayr, J. Mylopoulos, eds., Domain-Specific Conceptual Modeling: Concepts, Methods and Tools, Springer International Publishing, Cham, 2016.

A chapter in an edited book

[1]

B. von Vacano, M. Motzkus, Photonic Integration Enables Single-Beam Nonlinear Spectroscopy for Microscopy and Microanalytics, in: T.J. Hall, S.V. Gaponenko, S.A. Paredes (Eds.), Extreme Photonics & Applications, Springer Netherlands, Dordrecht, 2010: pp. 57–73.

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 Reviews in Physics.

Blog post

[1]

E. Andrew, Large Study Explores How Often Patients Wake Up During Surgery, IFLScience (2014). https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/large-study-explores-how-often-patients-wake-during-surgery/ (accessed October 30, 2018).

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, State Department: Problems in the Diplomatic Courier System, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC, 1989.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

[1]

S.M. Jo, A study of Korean students’ creativity in science using structural equation modeling, Doctoral dissertation, University of Arizona, 2009.

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]

J. Koblin, Amazon Executive Resigns After Harassment Claim, New York Times (2017) B6.

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	Reviews in Physics
Abbreviation	Rev. Phys.
ISSN (print)	2405-4283
Scope