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:

PaperpileThe citation style is built in and you can choose it in Settings > Citation Style or Paperpile > Citation Style in Google Docs.
EndNoteDownload the output style file
Mendeley, Zotero, Papers, and othersThe style is either built in or you can download a CSL file that is supported by most references management programs.
BibTeXBibTeX 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
Schnabel, J. (2010). Secrets of the shaking palsy. Nature, 466(7310), S2-5.
A journal article with 2 authors
Hollowed, A. B., & Sundby, S. (2014). Ecology. Change is coming to the northern oceans. Science (New York, N.Y.), 344(6188), 1084–1085.
A journal article with 3 authors
Taylor, G. K., Nudds, R. L., & Thomas, A. L. R. (2003). Flying and swimming animals cruise at a Strouhal number tuned for high power efficiency. Nature, 425(6959), 707–711.
A journal article with 8 or more authors
Shan, Z., Stach, E. A., Wiezorek, J. M. K., Knapp, J. A., Follstaedt, D. M., & Mao, S. X. (2004). Grain boundary-mediated plasticity in nanocrystalline nickel. Science (New York, N.Y.), 305(5684), 654–657.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book
Chu, P. P. (2008). FPGA Prototyping by Verilog Examples. John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
An edited book
Camenisch, J., & Kesdoğan, D. (Eds.). (2016). Open Problems in Network Security: IFIP WG 11.4 International Workshop, iNetSec 2015, Zurich, Switzerland, October 29, 2015, Revised Selected Papers (Vol. 9591). Springer International Publishing.
A chapter in an edited book
Yuz, J. I., & Goodwin, G. C. (2014). Asymptotic Sampling Zeros. In G. C. Goodwin (Ed.), Sampled-Data Models for Linear and Nonlinear Systems (pp. 47–58). 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
Carpineti, A. (2016, September 16). Beauty Of The Cosmos Revealed In Stunning Astronomy Photographer Of The Year 2016 Images. IFLScience; IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/space/beauty-of-the-cosmos-revealed-in-stunning-astronomy-photographer-of-the-year-2016-images/

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. (1978). Reimbursement of Depreciation and Interest Costs for Construction of Satellite Hospital (B-164031(3).150). 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
Dutta, A. (2010). Systems optimization for mobility management [Doctoral dissertation]. Columbia University.

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
Galani, U., & Hay, G. (2009, November 30). Helping Dubai, but Only So Far. New York Times, B2.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Schnabel, 2010).
This sentence cites two references (Hollowed & Sundby, 2014; Schnabel, 2010).

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

  • Two authors: (Hollowed & Sundby, 2014)
  • Three authors: (Taylor et al., 2003)
  • 6 or more authors: (Shan et al., 2004)

About the journal

Full journal titleAutomatica
AbbreviationAutomatica (Oxf.)
ISSN (print)0005-1098
ScopeControl and Systems Engineering
Electrical and Electronic Engineering

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