How to format your references using the Acta Astronautica citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Acta Astronautica. 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 references management programs.
BibTeX	BibTeX syles 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]

R.A. Betts, Offset of the potential carbon sink from boreal forestation by decreases in surface albedo, Nature 408 (2000) 187–190.

A journal article with 2 authors

[1]

A.J. Milligan, F.M.M. Morel, A proton buffering role for silica in diatoms, Science 297 (2002) 1848–1850.

A journal article with 3 authors

[1]

L.L. Healy, J.G. Cronin, I.M. Sheldon, Endometrial cells sense and react to tissue damage during infection of the bovine endometrium via interleukin 1, Sci. Rep. 4 (2014) 7060.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

[1]

M. Théry, A. Jiménez-Dalmaroni, V. Racine, M. Bornens, F. Jülicher, Experimental and theoretical study of mitotic spindle orientation, Nature 447 (2007) 493–496.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

[1]

U. Wystup, FX Options and Structured Products, John Wiley & Sons Ltd, Oxford, UK, 2006.

An edited book

[1]

P. Perner, ed., Advances in Data Mining: Applications in Image Mining, Medicine and Biotechnology, Management and Environmental Control, and Telecommunications; 4th Industrial Conference on Data Mining, ICDM 2004, Leipzig, Germany, July 4 -7, 2004, Revised Selected Papers, Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, 2005.

A chapter in an edited book

[1]

S.K. Calderwood, A. Murshid, B. Zhu, S.S. Mambula, Role of Host Molecular Chaperones in Responses to Bacterial Infection and Endotoxin Exposure, in: A.G. Pockley, S.K. Calderwood, M.G. Santoro (Eds.), Prokaryotic and Eukaryotic Heat Shock Proteins in Infectious Disease, Springer Netherlands, Dordrecht, 2010: pp. 107–120.

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 Acta Astronautica.

Blog post

[1]

J. O`Callaghan, SpaceX’s Next Rocket Will Liftoff From A Historic Former Space Shuttle Launch Pad, IFLScience (2017). https://www.iflscience.com/space/spacex-next-rocket-will-launch-from-a-historic-former-space-shuttle-pad/ (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, Department of Housing and Urban Development: Lack of Accountability for Computer Equipment Leaves These Assets Vulnerable to Loss or Misappropriation, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC, 2004.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

[1]

A.M. Stewart, Estimation of urban-enhanced infiltration and groundwater recharge, Sierra Vista subbasin, southeast Arizona USA, Doctoral dissertation, University of Arizona, 2014.

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]

K. Kelly, Giving Advice, Business Titans Feel at Home in White House, New York Times (2017) 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	Acta Astronautica
Abbreviation	Acta Astronaut.
ISSN (print)	0094-5765
Scope