How to format your references using the Communications in Theoretical Physics citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Communications in Theoretical 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 reference managers.
BibTeX	BibTeX styles 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]

Moorcock M 2000 Through the shaving mirror Nature 407 455

A journal article with 2 authors

[1]

Lloyd-Jones G C and Ball L T 2014 Catalysis. Self-control tames the coupling of reactive radicals Science 345 381–2

A journal article with 3 authors

[1]

Sinclair A R E, Mduma S and Brashares J S 2003 Patterns of predation in a diverse predator-prey system Nature 425 288–90

A journal article with 99 or more authors

[1]

Jackson R B, Berthrong S T, Cook C W, Jobbágy E G and McCulley R L 2004 Comment on “A reservoir of nitrate beneath desert soils” Science 304 51; author reply 51

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

[1]

Benchaib A 2015 Advanced Control of AC/DC Power Networks (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.)

An edited book

[1]

Matson J L, Andrasik F and Matson M L 2009 Assessing Childhood Psychopathology and Developmental Disabilities (New York, NY: Springer)

A chapter in an edited book

[1]

Kolaczyk E D and Csárdi G 2014 Mathematical Models for Network Graphs Statistical Analysis of Network Data with R Use R! ed G Csárdi (New York, NY: Springer) pp 69–83

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 Communications in Theoretical Physics.

Blog post

[1]

Andrew E 2014 Common Anti-Anxiety Drug Awakens Patient From Minimally Conscious State 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 1994 Early Childhood Programs: Many Poor Children and Strained Resources Challenge Head Start (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]

Kwon Y 2009 Extreme value estimators: Their long memory feature and forecasting performances in the U.S. stock indexes 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]

Kelly M 1992 Clinton Set for a Vacation Of Sports and Lots of Talk New York Times D8

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	Communications in Theoretical Physics
Abbreviation	Commun. Theor. Phys.
ISSN (print)	0253-6102
Scope	Physics and Astronomy (miscellaneous)