philphys — Philosophy of Physics article style

Release: 1.0.1 (2026-10-14). Author and current maintainer: Bryan W Roberts. Support: philphyssociety@gmail.com.

The philphys package provides a LaTeX article class and a classic BibTeX author–year style for the journal Philosophy of Physics. It supports anonymous review (blindreview), named manuscripts (manuscript, the default), and publisher production (published) for this journal.

Package Contents

• philphys.cls — article class.
• philphys.bst — bibliography style.
• philphys-documentation.tex and .pdf — author documentation.
• philphys-template.tex and .pdf — anonymous submission template and typeset example.
• philphys-sample-bibliography.bib — sample bibliography.
• philphys-bst-readme.md — detailed bibliography guidance.
• LICENSE.txt and CHANGELOG.md — licensing and release history.

Requirements

LaTeX 2022-11-01 or later; pdfLaTeX, XeLaTeX, or LuaLaTeX; and classic BibTeX, rather than Biber. The class uses STIX Two text and mathematics fonts through stix2.

Required packages, supplied by modern TeX distributions, are geometry, calc, ifthen, xcolor, tikz, graphicx, natbib, adjustbox, changepage, etoolbox, setspace, fancyhdr, titlesec, caption, sidecap, zref-savepos, zref-abspage, xstring, url, booktabs, enumitem, fontenc, inputenc, stix2, and hyperref. Published mode also requires hyperxmp. The template and documentation load amsmath. These dependencies are not included in this bundle.

Installation and use

For local use on your personal computer, keep philphys.cls, philphys.bst, philphys-template.tex, and philphys-sample-bibliography.bib in the same directory. Replace the sample content in philphys-template.tex and in philphys-sample-bibliography.bib with your own. On Overleaf, upload these files to your project and select philphys-template.tex as the main document.

For a TeX-tree installation, place the class in tex/latex/philphys/, the bibliography style in bibtex/bst/philphys/, and the documentation and examples in doc/latex/philphys/. Follow your distribution's instructions for refreshing its file index. Copy the author template and sample bibliography into your working directory.

Compile the template with:

pdflatex philphys-template.tex
bibtex philphys-template
pdflatex philphys-template.tex
pdflatex philphys-template.tex

Alternatively, use latexmk -pdf philphys-template.tex. The chicago package and chicago.sty are not required. See philphys-documentation.pdf for full instructions. Authors must anonymise their own prose, references, images, and attachments, and inspect the final PDF before submission to the journal.

Licensing and credits

Copyright 2026 Bryan W Roberts, except for inherited material.

The entire package, including the class, bibliography style, documentation, template, sample bibliography, and distributed PDFs, may be distributed and/or modified under the LaTeX Project Public License (LPPL) 1.3c or any later version. The work has maintenance status maintained. See LICENSE.txt for the complete file list and LPPL 1.3c for the licence terms. The original bibliography-style notices are preserved in philphys.bst. The package licence does not prescribe the licence of authors' original article content.

Developed by Bryan W Roberts with code support from ChatGPT and testing support from Alex Niederklapfer and Jim Weatherall. The bibliography style is adapted from Glenn Paulley's chicago.bst version 4 (1992), with its original attribution and copying notice preserved.

Philosophy of Physics bibliography style

Bundle version 1.0.1 (2026-10-14).

philphys.bst is a journal adaptation of Glenn Paulley's chicago.bst (version 4, 1992) by Bryan W Roberts with support from ChatGPT. The upstream file was downloaded from CTAN, and its attribution and copying notice are preserved in the derivative. Use the renamed file; the obsolete chicago.sty package is not needed.

Use and visual inspection

Keep philphys.cls, philphys.bst, your article, and its .bib file in the same folder. The blind-review template prints only its cited example, Weyl (1918):

\bibliographystyle{philphys}
\bibliography{philphys-sample-bibliography}

For a temporary visual check of all sample references, add \nocite{*} before these commands; remove it before submission.

Compile with pdfLaTeX, BibTeX, pdfLaTeX, pdfLaTeX, or use latexmk -pdf philphys-template.tex. XeLaTeX and LuaLaTeX can also use this classic BibTeX style; do not use Biber. Bibliography formatting is the same in every class mode. Blind review suppresses article identity, not names in references: authors must review self-citations and identifying prose themselves. See philphys-documentation.tex for the complete anonymity guidance.

\citet{weyl1918} prints “Weyl (1918)”, \citep{weyl1918} prints “(Weyl 1918)”, and \citep[272]{weyl1918} prints “(Weyl 1918, 272)” when those are the only cited works by these authors/years. Suffixes appear when additional cited references share an abbreviated author–year label. Three or more authors use “et al.” in ordinary citations; starred commands such as \citet* use the full list. Citation punctuation is configured by the class, not the .bst.

philphys-sample-bibliography.bib contains two test entries for Thirring and Weyl to illustrate how the external bibliography works. You can delete those fixtures and replace the sample references as you like, but they would be automatically ignored in the compiled bibliography unless you cite them.

Basis and formatting decisions

Published Philosophy of Physics articles share the main Chicago author–date structure. This style follows the conventions of the more recent articles reviewed during development:

The examples contain inconsistent issue spacing, punctuation, capitalization, and occasional incomplete metadata. This style follows their shared conventions and does not reproduce isolated inconsistencies. Editor-only books, theses, reports, undated items, and access dates use documented fallback conventions; the supplied journal examples do not establish every detail for these types.

Data entry

Use classic BibTeX fields (year, journal, address), not biblatex's date, journaltitle, or location. Enter titles in the desired case and full given names if they should appear in full. The style cannot reconstruct names that are supplied only as initials. Use TeX accents for reliable classic BibTeX processing, e.g. D{\"u}rr, and double braces for corporate authors.

• doi: bare identifier, doi:..., or an HTTP/HTTPS DOI resolver URL.
• url: plain URL; identical DOI URLs are suppressed to avoid duplication.
• eid or articleno: article number when pages is absent.
• eprint with archiveprefix = {arXiv}: generates an arXiv link if url is absent.
• edition = {2nd}: prints “2nd ed.”; do not put “ed.” in the field.
• year = {forthcoming}: retained in the list and citations; no year becomes “n.d.”.
• urldate: optional human-readable access date.
• crossref: ordinary BibTeX inheritance; supply booktitle on the parent or child. Put the parent after its children in the database. BibTeX may automatically add the parent when enough children are cited; that behavior is controlled by BibTeX, not this style.
• month: recognized for compatibility but not printed; the author–year label uses year only.

Supported types are article, book, booklet, inbook, incollection, inproceedings (and conference), manual, mastersthesis, phdthesis, proceedings, techreport, unpublished, and misc. The aliases online, electronic, and preprint use the misc field order. Unrecognized entry types use the same fallback. Leading names fall back from author to editor, organization, key, then “Anonymous”; missing dates print “n.d.”. Complete publication details where available: an article without a journal or a book without a publisher produces a BibTeX warning. urldate is printed as supplied; it is not parsed as a date.

Sorting/citation labels contain no formatting commands. Boldface is applied only to the names printed in bibliography entries; embedded chapter editors remain in ordinary weight.

Maintenance

The .bst header explains the source, assumptions, supported fields, and the functions controlling each formatting choice. Journal-specific changes carry POP comments. The class controls font sizes, hanging indentation, and reference spacing; the .bst controls reference text, punctuation, names, and links.

Licence

Copyright 2026 Bryan W Roberts. These notes may be distributed and/or modified under LPPL 1.3c or any later version, as part of the maintained philphys work. See LICENSE.txt for the licence and complete file list.