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

Figer, D.F. Astrophysics: Monster Star Found Hiding in Plain Sight. Nature 2014, 515, 42–44.

A journal article with 2 authors

Sawa, A.; Snyder, S.H. Genetics. Two Genes Link Two Distinct Psychoses. Science 2005, 310, 1128–1129.

A journal article with 3 authors

Contreras, M.; Ceric, F.; Torrealba, F. Inactivation of the Interoceptive Insula Disrupts Drug Craving and Malaise Induced by Lithium. Science 2007, 318, 655–658.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Pomeranz Krummel, D.A.; Oubridge, C.; Leung, A.K.W.; Li, J.; Nagai, K. Crystal Structure of Human Spliceosomal U1 SnRNP at 5.5 A Resolution. Nature 2009, 458, 475–480.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Tourlakis, G. Mathematical Logic; John Wiley & Sons, Inc.: Hoboken, NJ, 2008; ISBN 9781118032435.

An edited book

Wang, D. Model-Based Health Monitoring of Hybrid Systems; Yu, M., Low, C.B., Arogeti, S., Eds.; Springer: New York, NY, 2013; ISBN 9781461473688.

A chapter in an edited book

Hendricks, V.F.; Hansen, P.G. Choice: Framing Choice. In Infostorms: Why do we “like”? Explaining individual behavior on the social net; Hansen, P.G., Ed.; Springer International Publishing: Cham, 2016; pp. 85–103 ISBN 9783319327648.

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

Evans, K. Recently Discovered “Casper” The Octopod Already At Risk From Deep-Sea Mining Available online: https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/recently-discovered-casper-the-octopod-already-at-risk-from-deepsea-mining/ (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 Examination Into the Manner in Which the Office of Education Is Administering the Teacher Corps Program; U.S. Government Printing Office: Washington, DC, 1971;

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Gowda, V. Pollination Biology and Inter-Island Geographical Variation in the Mutualistic Heliconia (Heliconiaceae)-Hummingbird (Trochilidae) Interaction of the Eastern Caribbean Islands. Doctoral dissertation, George Washington University: Washington, DC, 2009.

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

Brownmiller, S. Hugh Hefner Was My Enemy. New York Times 2017, SR3.

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