How to format your references using the Physica Scripta citation style

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

Kessin R H 2010 Microbiology. Sex and sacrifice Science 330 1487–8

A journal article with 2 authors

[1]

Eisen J A and Fraser C M 2003 Phylogenomics: intersection of evolution and genomics Science 300 1706–7

A journal article with 3 authors

[1]

Costello C, Gaines S D and Lynham J 2008 Can catch shares prevent fisheries collapse? Science 321 1678–81

A journal article with 99 or more authors

[1]

Lim L P, Glasner M E, Yekta S, Burge C B and Bartel D P 2003 Vertebrate microRNA genes Science 299 1540

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

[1]

Démoulin B and Besnier P 2011 Electromagnetic Reverberation Chambers (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc)

An edited book

[1]

Williams R D and Lee A 2015 Internationalizing Higher Education: Critical Collaborations across the Curriculum (Rotterdam: SensePublishers)

A chapter in an edited book

[1]

Roth W-M, Goulart M I M and Plakitsi K 2013 Margin|Center Science Education during Early Childhood: A Cultural-Historical Perspective Cultural Studies of Science Education ed M I M Goulart and K Plakitsi (Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands) pp 91–110

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 Scripta.

Blog post

[1]

Andrew E 2014 Scientists Can Learn From Pseudoscience … That’s A Fact 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 1996 Hispanic Employment Statistics (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]

Leonard J M 2001 The Effect of Manufacturing Establishments on Local Area per Capita Personal Income in the U.S. 1967-1990 Doctoral dissertation (Cincinnati, OH: University of Cincinnati)

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]

Vecsey G 2011 Minaya Still Watches the Mets, Who Failed on His Watch New York Times B12

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 Scripta
Abbreviation	Phys. Scr.
ISSN (print)	0031-8949
ISSN (online)	1402-4896
Scope	Mathematical Physics Condensed Matter Physics Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics