How to format your references using the Artificial Life and Robotics citation style

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

Venema L (2000) Fathers of electronic revolution are rewarded. Nature 407:662

A journal article with 2 authors

Schindler CS, Jacobsen EN (2013) Chemistry. A new twist on cooperative catalysis. Science 340:1052–1053

A journal article with 3 authors

Silk JB, Alberts SC, Altmann J (2003) Social bonds of female baboons enhance infant survival. Science 302:1231–1234

A journal article with 5 or more authors

Zhu H, Qin X, Sun X, et al (2013) Rocking-chair configuration in ultrathin lithium vanadate-graphene hybrid nanosheets for electrical modulation. Sci Rep 3:1246

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Pozzilli P, Lenzi A, Clarke BL, Young WF Jr (2013) Imaging in Endocrinology. John Wiley & Sons Ltd, Chichester, UK

An edited book

Khendek F, Dssouli R (2005) Testing of Communicating Systems: 17th IFIP TC6/WG 6.1 International Conference, TestCom 2005, Montreal, Canada, May 31 - June, 2005. Proceedings. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

A chapter in an edited book

Scott-Conner CEH, Chassin JL (2014) Surgical Stapling: Principles and Precautions. In: Scott-Conner CEH (ed) Chassin’s Operative Strategy in General Surgery: An Expositive Atlas. Springer, New York, NY, pp 39–44

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 Artificial Life and Robotics.

Blog post

Hale T (2016) Dig Begins For Legendary Nazi Gold Train. In: IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/editors-blog/dig-begins-for-legendary-nazi-gold-train/. Accessed 30 Oct 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 (2009) Information Technology: Federal Agencies Need to Strengthen Investment Board Oversight of Poorly Planned and Performing Projects. U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Kellogg A (2010) Hospital Lean and Six Sigma: Is there a financial benefit? Doctoral dissertation, California State University, Long Beach

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

Wagner J (2017) Mets, Shedding Veterans, Send Walker to Brewers. New York Times SP5

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	Artificial Life and Robotics
Abbreviation	Artif. Life Robot.
ISSN (print)	1433-5298
ISSN (online)	1614-7456
Scope	General Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology Artificial Intelligence

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