How to format your references using the Autonomous Robots citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Autonomous Robots. 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.
EndNoteFind the style here: output styles overview
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
Wineland, D. (2011). Norman Ramsey (1915-2011). Nature, 480(7376), 182.
A journal article with 2 authors
Williams, B. R. G., & Sen, G. C. (2003). Immunology. A viral on/off switch for interferon. Science (New York, N.Y.), 300(5622), 1100–1101.
A journal article with 3 authors
Stuphorn, V., Taylor, T. L., & Schall, J. D. (2000). Performance monitoring by the supplementary eye field. Nature, 408(6814), 857–860.
A journal article with 8 or more authors
Schlittler, R. R., Seo, J. W., Gimzewski, J. K., Durkan, C., Saifullah, M. S., & Welland, M. E. (2001). Single crystals of single-walled carbon nanotubes formed by self-assembly. Science (New York, N.Y.), 292(5519), 1136–1139.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book
Jones, D. W. (2014). Economic Theory and the Ancient Mediterranean. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
An edited book
Spaccapietra, S., Atzeni, P., Fages, F., Hacid, M.-S., Kifer, M., Mylopoulos, J., et al. (Eds.). (2007). Journal on Data Semantics IX (Vol. 4601). Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer.
A chapter in an edited book
Balmer, A. S., Bulpin, K., & Molyneux-Hodgson, S. (2016). Enacting Ontologies, Failure and Time. In K. Bulpin & S. Molyneux-Hodgson (Eds.), Synthetic Biology: A Sociology of Changing Practices (pp. 151–190). London: Palgrave Macmillan UK.

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 Autonomous Robots.

Blog post
Andrew, E. (2015, October 10). The Oceans Are Becoming Too Hot For Coral, And Sooner Than We Expected. IFLScience. IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/environment/oceans-are-becoming-too-hot-coral-and-sooner-we-expected/. Accessed 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. (1997). World Wide Web Sites: Reported by 42 Federal Organizations (Supplement to Internet and Electronic Dial-Up Bulletin Board System Activities: Information Reported by Federal Organizations) (No. GGD-97-86S). Washington, DC: 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
Agbi, E. S. (2010). Shadow economy and the related issues of tax evasion: A comparative analysis among Canadian workers (Doctoral dissertation). Northcentral University, Scottsdale, AZ.

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, B., & London, M. (2004, April 22). Bright Spots in the Rain Forest. New York Times, p. A27.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Wineland 2011).
This sentence cites two references (Williams and Sen 2003; Wineland 2011).

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

  • Two authors: (Williams and Sen 2003)
  • Three or more authors: (Schlittler et al. 2001)

About the journal

Full journal titleAutonomous Robots
AbbreviationAuton. Robots
ISSN (print)0929-5593
ISSN (online)1573-7527
ScopeArtificial Intelligence

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