How to format your references using the The Journal of General Physiology citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for The Journal of General Physiology. 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

Stace, A. 2001. Chemistry. Cluster solutions. Science. 294:1292–1293.

A journal article with 2 authors

Engelhardt, K.A., and M.E. Ritchie. 2001. Effects of macrophyte species richness on wetland ecosystem functioning and services. Nature. 411:687–689.

A journal article with 3 authors

Alves, J.F., C.J. Lada, and E.A. Lada. 2001. Internal structure of a cold dark molecular cloud inferred from the extinction of background starlight. Nature. 409:159–161.

A journal article with 99 or more authors

Ma, T., M.-J. Zhao, Y.-K. Wang, and S.-M. Fei. 2014. Non-commutativity and local indistinguishability of quantum states. Sci. Rep. 4:6336.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Pouly, M., and J. Kohlas. 2011. Generic Inference. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ.

An edited book

Syka, J., and M.M. Merzenich eds. . 2005. Plasticity and Signal Representation in the Auditory System. Springer US, Boston, MA. X, 418 p. 132 illus pp.

A chapter in an edited book

Algaba, F., S.S. Shen, L.D. Truong, and J.Y. Ro. 2009. Prostate. In Frozen Section Library: Genitourinary Tract. S.S. Shen and J.Y. Ro, editors. Springer, New York, NY. 115–135.

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 The Journal of General Physiology.

Blog post

Andrew, E. 2015. Four Myths About Allergies You Thought Were True – But Aren’t. 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

Government Accountability Office. 1993. Athletic Department Profiles. U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Perez, R.W. 2017. Stepping Stone or Stumbling Block? The Impact of Prior Military Service on Hiring Managers’ Perceptions of Warmth, Competence, and Hirability. Southern Illinois University, Edwardsville, IL.

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

Koblin, J. 2017. CBS Anchor Bids Farewell, Then Is Asked to Leave. New York Times. B2.

In-text citations

References should be cited in the text by name and year in parentheses:

This sentence cites one reference (Stace, 2001).
This sentence cites two references (Stace, 2001; Engelhardt and Ritchie, 2001).

Here are examples of in-text citations with multiple authors:

Two authors: (Engelhardt and Ritchie, 2001)
Three or more authors: (Ma et al., 2014)

About the journal

Full journal title	The Journal of General Physiology
Abbreviation	J. Gen. Physiol.
ISSN (print)	0022-1295
ISSN (online)	1540-7748
Scope	Physiology