How to format your references using the Actuators citation style

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

Prusiner, S.B. Cell Biology. A Unifying Role for Prions in Neurodegenerative Diseases. Science 2012, 336, 1511–1513.

A journal article with 2 authors

Smith, E.R.; Mackie, D.M. Behavior. Surprising Emotions. Science 2009, 323, 215–216.

A journal article with 3 authors

Bowler, C.; Karl, D.M.; Colwell, R.R. Microbial Oceanography in a Sea of Opportunity. Nature 2009, 459, 180–184.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Dormitzer, P.R.; Nason, E.B.; Prasad, B.V.V.; Harrison, S.C. Structural Rearrangements in the Membrane Penetration Protein of a Non-Enveloped Virus. Nature 2004, 430, 1053–1058.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Thyagarajan, K.S. Still Image and Video Compression with MATLAB; John Wiley & Sons, Inc.: Hoboken, NJ, 2010; ISBN 9780470886922.

An edited book

Pre-Columbian Foodways: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Food, Culture, and Markets in Ancient Mesoamerica; Staller, J., Carrasco, M., Eds.; Springer: New York, NY, 2010; ISBN 9781441904706.

A chapter in an edited book

Ekoff, M.; Nilsson, G. Mast Cell Apoptosis and Survival. In Mast Cell Biology: Contemporary and Emerging Topics; Gilfillan, A.M., Metcalfe, D.D., Eds.; Advances in Experimental Medicine and Biology; Springer US: Boston, MA, 2011; pp. 47–60 ISBN 9781441995322.

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 Actuators.

Blog post

Andrew, E. Here Be Dragons: The Supermassive Black Hole That’s Growing Impossibly Fast (accessed on 30 October 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

Government Accountability Office Review of Claims Settlement; U.S. Government Printing Office: Washington, DC, 1973;

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Sharma, S.P. U.S. Government Program Managers’ Competencies to Manage Satellite Acquisition Programs. Doctoral dissertation, Northcentral University: Scottsdale, AZ, 2017.

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

Murphy, M.J.O. Stepping Alone, Together. New York Times 2015, AR12.

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	Actuators
Abbreviation	Actuators
ISSN (online)	2076-0825
Scope