How to format your references using the Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications. 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 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]

S. Bordel, Experimental evidence suggests the existence of evolutionary conserved global operation principles governing microbial metabolism, Sci. Rep. 3 (2013) 3017.

A journal article with 2 authors

[1]

R. Imondi, J.B. Thomas, Neuroscience. The ups and downs of Wnt signaling, Science 302 (2003) 1903–1904.

A journal article with 3 authors

[1]

T.R. Brummelkamp, R. Bernards, R. Agami, A system for stable expression of short interfering RNAs in mammalian cells, Science 296 (2002) 550–553.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

[1]

H. Watanabe, J. Vriens, J. Prenen, G. Droogmans, T. Voets, B. Nilius, Anandamide and arachidonic acid use epoxyeicosatrienoic acids to activate TRPV4 channels, Nature 424 (2003) 434–438.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

[1]

W.L. Frank, D.K. Whittle, Revalidating Process Hazard Analyses, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ, 2010.

An edited book

[1]

J. Syka, M.M. Merzenich, eds., Plasticity and Signal Representation in the Auditory System, Springer US, Boston, MA, 2005.

A chapter in an edited book

[1]

C.S. Hardin, A.D. Taylor, Dual Hat Problems, Ideals, and the Uncountable, in: A.D. Taylor (Ed.), The Mathematics of Coordinated Inference: A Study of Generalized Hat Problems, Springer International Publishing, Cham, 2013: pp. 49–59.

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 Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications.

Blog post

[1]

R. Andrews, The Story Of The Dinosaurs Is About To Get A Major Rewrite, IFLScience (2017).

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, Weather Forecasting: Unmet Needs and Unknown Costs Warrant Reassessment of Observing System Plans, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC, 1995.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

[1]

D.L. Stanfill, Teacher perception of the alignment of enhancing Missouri’s Instructional Networked Teaching Strategies (eMINTS) with the National Staff Development Council (NSDC) Standards, Doctoral dissertation, Lindenwood University, 2010.

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]

M.D. Shear, J. Glanz, Trump Says U.S. Should ‘Expand’ Nuclear Ability, New York Times (2016) A1.

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	Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications
Abbreviation	Physica A
ISSN (print)	0378-4371
Scope	Statistics and Probability Condensed Matter Physics