How to format your references using the Journal of Physics Communications citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Journal of Physics Communications. 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]

Lane J 2009 Science innovation. Assessing the impact of science funding Science 324 1273–5

A journal article with 2 authors

[1]

Tsai L and Barnea G 2014 A critical period defined by axon-targeting mechanisms in the murine olfactory bulb Science 344 197–200

A journal article with 3 authors

[1]

Lestas I, Vinnicombe G and Paulsson J 2010 Fundamental limits on the suppression of molecular fluctuations Nature 467 174–8

A journal article with 99 or more authors

[1]

Mysterud A, Stenseth N C, Yoccoz N G, Langvatn R and Steinheim G 2001 Nonlinear effects of large-scale climatic variability on wild and domestic herbivores Nature 410 1096–9

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

[1]

Halloran M and Thies C 2012 The Social Media Handbook for Financial Advisors (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.)

An edited book

[1]

Nugent C, Coronato A and Bravo J 2013 Ambient Assisted Living and Active Aging: 5th International Work-Conference, IWAAL 2013, Carrillo, Costa Rica, December 2-6, 2013, Proceedings vol 8277 (Cham: Springer International Publishing)

A chapter in an edited book

[1]

Ehara T 2005 Faculty Perceptions of University Governance in Japan and the United States The Professoriate: Profile of a Profession Higher Education Dynamics ed A Welch (Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands) pp 59–69

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 Journal of Physics Communications.

Blog post

[1]

Andrew E 2015 ‘No Jab, No Pay’ Policy Has A Serious Ethical Sting 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 1981 Unanswered Questions on Educating Handicapped Children in Local Public Schools (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]

Nash M C 2017 Reading Achievement: A Study of Perceptions of First-Grade Teachers and the Relationship Between Attendance and Reading Achievement Doctoral dissertation ( St. Charles, MO: Lindenwood 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]

Hodara S 2014 Stitching Together Yarn, Memory and History New York Times WE6

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	Journal of Physics Communications
ISSN (online)	2399-6528
Scope