How to format your references using the Physica Medica citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Physica Medica. 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]

Childress L. Physics. Diamond dynamics under control. Science 2014;345:1247–8.

A journal article with 2 authors

[1]

Holm EA, Foiles SM. How grain growth stops: a mechanism for grain-growth stagnation in pure materials. Science 2010;328:1138–41.

A journal article with 3 authors

[1]

Aida T, Meijer EW, Stupp SI. Functional supramolecular polymers. Science 2012;335:813–7.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

[1]

Herzog F, Primorac I, Dube P, Lenart P, Sander B, Mechtler K, et al. Structure of the anaphase-promoting complex/cyclosome interacting with a mitotic checkpoint complex. Science 2009;323:1477–81.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

[1]

Kubicek CP. Fungi and Lignocellulosic Biomass. Oxford, UK: Wiley-Blackwell; 2012.

An edited book

[1]

Ruru L, editor. Staging China: New Theatres in the Twenty-First Century. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan US; 2016.

A chapter in an edited book

[1]

Belaïd A, Ouwayed N. Segmentation of Ancient Arabic Documents. In: Märgner V, El Abed H, editors. Guide to OCR for Arabic Scripts, London: Springer; 2012, p. 103–22.

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 Medica.

Blog post

[1]

O`Callaghan J. Rosetta Spacecraft Snaps New Horizons At Pluto From Five Billion Kilometers Away. IFLScience 2015. https://www.iflscience.com/space/rosetta-takes-image-new-horizons-pluto-5-billion-kilometers-away/ (accessed October 30, 2018).

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. Highway Financing: Factors Affecting Highway Trust Fund Revenues. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 2002.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

[1]

Stevenson J. Differences in physical activity behavior between insulin using diabetics versus non-insulin using diabetics. Doctoral dissertation. California State University, Long Beach, 2012.

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]

Montague J. A Storied Name in Soccer Faces an Uncertain Future. New York Times 2017:B7.

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 Medica
Abbreviation	Phys. Med.
ISSN (print)	1120-1797
Scope	Biophysics General Medicine Radiology Nuclear Medicine and imaging General Physics and Astronomy