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

Whitaker, B.J. Chemistry. Shining Light on Diabolic Points. Science 2011, 334, 187–188.

A journal article with 2 authors

Moffatt, H.K.; Shimomura, Y. Classical Dynamics: Spinning Eggs--a Paradox Resolved. Nature 2002, 416, 385–386.

A journal article with 3 authors

Nørskov, J.K.; Bligaard, T.; Kleis, J. Chemistry. Rate Control and Reaction Engineering. Science 2009, 324, 1655–1656.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Huang, A.L.; Chen, X.; Hoon, M.A.; Chandrashekar, J.; Guo, W.; Tränkner, D.; Ryba, N.J.P.; Zuker, C.S. The Cells and Logic for Mammalian Sour Taste Detection. Nature 2006, 442, 934–938.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Wells, J.T. Corporate Fraud Handbook; John Wiley & Sons, Inc.: Hoboken, NJ, 2017; ISBN 9781119351962.

An edited book

Gentili, G. The Median Nerve: Motor Conduction Studies; Di Napoli, M., Ed.; Springer International Publishing: Cham, 2015; ISBN 9783319104720.

A chapter in an edited book

Demarcy, T.; Vandersteen, C.; Raffaelli, C.; Gnansia, D.; Guevara, N.; Ayache, N.; Delingette, H. Uncertainty Quantification of Cochlear Implant Insertion from CT Images. In Clinical Image-Based Procedures. Translational Research in Medical Imaging: 5th International Workshop, CLIP 2016, Held in Conjunction with MICCAI 2016, Athens, Greece, October 17, 2016, Proceedings; Shekhar, R., Wesarg, S., González Ballester, M.Á., Drechsler, K., Sato, Y., Erdt, M., Linguraru, M.G., Oyarzun Laura, C., Eds.; Lecture Notes in Computer Science; Springer International Publishing: Cham, 2016; pp. 27–35 ISBN 9783319464718.

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. New Type Of Stem Cell Discovered Available online: https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/scientists-find-new-type-stem-cell/ (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 Low-Income and Minority Serving Institutions: Education Has Taken Steps to Improve Monitoring and Assistance, but Further Progress Is Needed; U.S. Government Printing Office: Washington, DC, 2007;

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Gullion, D.K. The Study of Interstate and Intrastate Mobility Effects on Student Achievement. Doctoral dissertation, Indiana University: Bloomington, IN, 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

Kelly, C. The Literary Journal And the Small Press Live On, in Austin. New York Times 2013, A31B.

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