Specialist Citation Styles: What Is AIP Referencing?

Knowadays provides in-depth advice on academic proofreading, including outlining several major citation styles. But there are other specialist styles that you may encounter in your work. Today, for example, we’re taking a quick look at AIP referencing.

What Is AIP Referencing?

AIP referencing was created by the American Institute of Physics. It is often used for papers about physics, especially in journals published by the AIP. You can find the full instructions for this system in the fourth edition of the AIP Style Manual [PDF], which was published in 1990.

This manual is a little out of date, so you need to make allowances for this when proofreading documents that use the AIP system (e.g., see the section on online sources below). But it is still common in university physics departments, so it’s worth knowing the basics.

In-Text Citations in AIP Style

AIP referencing is a number–note system, which means:

• Writers should cite sources with a superscript number in the text.
• Sources are numbered sequentially based on when they are first cited (i.e., the first source cited in a document should be numbered 1, the second 2, and so on). This numbering will also determine the position of sources in the reference list.
• If an author is named in the text, it should be just their surname. For sources with three or more authors, it should be the first named author plus “et al.”

You can see examples of AIP-style citations below:

AIP referencing is used by several physics journals.¹ Smith et al. ² and Frederick³ also suggest using AIP referencing for acoustics manuscripts.

When proofreading a document in AIP style, you may need to move a citation number if its position makes it ambiguous (e.g., if it appears after a formula). For instance:

Hermann is credited with applying the formula F=ma³ in this field. ✗

Hermann³ is credited with applying the formula F=ma in this field. ✓

As ever in proofreading, then, your main priorities are ensuring clarity and consistency.

Reference Lists in AIP Style

The basic guidelines for formatting an AIP reference list are:

• Start on a new page at the end of a document.
• Include all sources cited in the main document.
• List references in the order they appear in the document.
• Give author names as shown on the title page of the cited work.
• Only use “et al.” in the reference list for sources with more than three authors.

When proofreading, you should check that your client’s reference list follows these rules. The AIP Style Manual also suggests underlining book titles in the reference list. However, most publishers and schools prefer to use italics for this now, so underlining is quite rare.

AIP Reference Formats

The format of the references themselves will depend on the source type. In all cases, though, they should provide enough detail to let readers find the source cited. The format for a book in an AIP reference list (using the modern convention of italicizing the title), for instance, is:

ⁿ Author Name(s), Book Title, Edition (Publisher, Location, Year of Publication), page number (if citing a specific part of the source).

The basic format for a journal article, meanwhile, is:

ⁿ Author Name(s), Abbreviated Journal Title. Volume, issue (if journal issues are not paginated consecutively), initial page number (year of publication).

For the standard abbreviations of journal titles, you can check Appendix G of the AIP Style Manual or you can look online (especially for journals first published since 1990).

In practice, then, references for these sources would look like this:

¹ F. A. Everest and K. C. Pohlmann, Master Handbook of Acoustics, 6^th ed. (McGraw-Hill Education, New York, 2015), p. 50.

² G. Young and R. E. Funderlic, J. Appl. Phys. 44, 5151 (1973).

As usual, though, your priority is making sure that references are clear and consistent. And if you need to check anything, you can usually find examples of different source types online, in the AIP Style Manual, or in the author instructions for your client’s journal.

Electronic Sources in AIP Referencing

Since the AIP style manual hasn’t been updated recently, it doesn’t include specific guidance for online or digital sources. As such, you’ll need to check your client’s style guide for these (either a university style guide or the author instructions for a journal).

If you don’t have a specific journal’s style guide to follow, make sure that your client has at least included a URL or DOI and a date of access for all online sources.

Variations in AIP Referencing

AIP style permits many variations on the basic style above. And this can be a bit of a headache for proofreaders. Two key variations are related to journal references, where the AIP guidelines note that some editors may require writers to:

• Use inclusive page numbers (e.g., 74–82) instead of just an initial page number.
• Include article titles in quote marks before the journal title.

The AIP Style Manual even says that some journal editors prefer author–date citations, so you may come across documents in “AIP style” that use a completely different system!

So, while we’re at risk of repeating ourselves at this point, you should always check whether your client is using a specific version of this system when proofreading documents. This will usually be a school style guide or the author instructions for a specific journal.

Become A Proofreader

There is high demand for proofreaders in academia, so it is worth learning how to proofread academic work. Our Becoming A Proofreader course can help you learn all you need to know to work on academic documents and check reference lists. Check out the free trial today!