How to format your references using the Automatica citation style

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

Gershon, D. (2000). Laying a firm foundation for interdisciplinary research endeavours. Nature, 406(6791), 107–108.

A journal article with 2 authors

Armitage, B. A., & Berget, P. B. (2008). Chemistry. An enlightening structure-function relationship. Science (New York, N.Y.), 319(5867), 1195–1196.

A journal article with 3 authors

Lyons, J. R., Lewis, R. S., & Clayton, R. N. (2009). Comment on “Experimental test of self-shielding in vacuum ultraviolet photodissociation of CO.” Science (New York, N.Y.), 324(5934), 1516;author reply 1516.

A journal article with 8 or more authors

Hales, T. C., Abt, D. L., Humphreys, E. D., & Roering, J. J. (2005). A lithospheric instability origin for Columbia River flood basalts and Wallowa Mountains uplift in northeast Oregon. Nature, 438(7069), 842–845.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Morley, D. (2017). Communications and Mobility. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

An edited book

Droste-Franke, B. (2015). Improving Energy Decisions: Towards Better Scientific Policy Advice for a Safe and Secure Future Energy System (M. Carrier, M. Kaiser, M. Schreurs, C. Weber, & T. Ziesemer, Eds.; Vol. 42). Springer International Publishing.

A chapter in an edited book

Grand, M., Bossuet, L., Le Gal, B., Gogniat, G., & Dallet, D. (2011). Design and Implementation of a Multi-Core Crypto-Processor for Software Defined Radios. In A. Koch, R. Krishnamurthy, J. McAllister, R. Woods, & T. El-Ghazawi (Eds.), Reconfigurable Computing: Architectures, Tools and Applications: 7th International Symposium, ARC 2011, Belfast, UK, March 23-25, 2011. Proceedings (pp. 29–40). Springer.

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 Automatica.

Blog post

Andrew, E. (2015, August 12). Extreme Droughts Weaken Trees’ Ability To Soak Up Carbon. IFLScience; IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/environment/extreme-droughts-weaken-trees-ability-soak-carbon-0/

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. (1996). Scientific Research: Continued Vigilance Critical to Protecting Human Subjects (HEHS-96-72). U.S. Government Printing Office.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Calhoun, G. F. (2009). Limit theory for overfit models [Doctoral dissertation]. University of California San Diego.

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

Hodara, S. (2015, February 1). A Master of Metallurgy. New York Times, WE10.

In-text citations

References should be cited in the text by name and year in parentheses:

This sentence cites one reference (Gershon, 2000).
This sentence cites two references (Armitage & Berget, 2008; Gershon, 2000).

Here are examples of in-text citations with multiple authors:

Two authors: (Armitage & Berget, 2008)
Three authors: (Lyons et al., 2009)
6 or more authors: (Hales et al., 2005)

About the journal

Full journal title	Automatica
Abbreviation	Automatica (Oxf.)
ISSN (print)	0005-1098
Scope	Control and Systems Engineering Electrical and Electronic Engineering