How to format your references using the The Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for The Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters. 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

(1)

Michelson, A. M. Developmental Biology. From Genetic Association to Genetic Switch. Science 2008, 322 (5909), 1803–1804.

A journal article with 2 authors

(1)

Beg, A. A.; Scheiffele, P. Neuroscience. SUMO Wrestles the Synapse. Science 2006, 311 (5763), 962–963.

A journal article with 3 authors

(1)

Prytkova, T. R.; Kurnikov, I. V.; Beratan, D. N. Coupling Coherence Distinguishes Structure Sensitivity in Protein Electron Transfer. Science 2007, 315 (5812), 622–625.

A journal article with 11 or more authors

(1)

Lipton, A. J.; Johnson, M. A.; Macdonald, T.; Lieberman, M. W.; Gozal, D.; Gaston, B. S-Nitrosothiols Signal the Ventilatory Response to Hypoxia. Nature 2001, 413 (6852), 171–174.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

(1)

Smith, J.; Roberts, R. Vital Signs for Nurses; John Wiley & Sons, Ltd: Chichester, UK, 2015.

An edited book

(1)

Helminth Infections and Their Impact on Global Public Health; Bruschi, F., Ed.; Springer: Vienna, 2014.

A chapter in an edited book

(1)

Schulz, F. R. Word of Mouth Impulses Boost Wines of Germany: A Case Study. In Successful Social Media and Ecommerce Strategies in the Wine Industry; Szolnoki, G., Thach, L., Kolb, D., Eds.; Institut für Management und Tourismus (IMT); Palgrave Macmillan US: New York, NY, 2016; pp 55–73.

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 The Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters.

Blog post

(1)

Hale, T. California’s Famous Giant Sequoia “Tunnel Tree” Falls From Heavy Rain. 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. Information Technology: Library of Congress Needs to Implement Recommendations to Address Management Weaknesses; GAO-16-197T; U.S. Government Printing Office: Washington, DC, 2015.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

(1)

Ritter, D. The EU and Conflict: Critically Assessing the Success of the ESDP and Its Impact in Conflict Areas. Doctoral dissertation, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC, 2008.

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)

Kelly, R. K. R.; whose most recent book of poems is ’ ’Not This Island Music; Literature, ’ ’ Teaches; writing at Bard College. I AM NOT A HALFBACK. New York Times. September 27, 1987, p 79.

In-text citations

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

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	The Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters
Abbreviation	J. Phys. Chem. Lett.
ISSN (online)	1948-7185
Scope	General Materials Science