How to format your references using the Evolving Systems citation style

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

Elliott T (2014) Planetary science. Speed metal. Science 344:1086–1087

A journal article with 2 authors

Lau WCY, Rubinstein JL (2011) Subnanometre-resolution structure of the intact Thermus thermophilus H+-driven ATP synthase. Nature 481:214–218

A journal article with 3 authors

Lazzerini GM, Strambini LM, Barillaro G (2013) Addressing reliability and degradation of chemitransistor sensors by electrical tuning of the sensitivity. Sci Rep 3:1161

A journal article with 5 or more authors

Bever GS, Rowe T, Ekdale EG, et al (2005) Comment on “Independent origins of middle ear bones in monotremes and therians” (I). Science 309:1492; author reply 1492

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Zink M (2005) Scalable Video on Demand. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd,., West Sussex, England

An edited book

Monastyrsky MI (ed) (2007) Topology in Molecular Biology. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

A chapter in an edited book

Humphries B, Abel T (2014) Modelling the Dispersion of Pollutants: Two Case Studies. In: Taylor E, McMillan A (eds) Air Quality Management: Canadian Perspectives on a Global Issue. Springer Netherlands, Dordrecht, pp 99–127

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 Evolving Systems.

Blog post

Fang J (2014) Herpes Infected Our Ancestors Before They Were Human. In: IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/herpes-infected-our-ancestors-they-were-human/. 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 (1971) Examination of Disbursing Transactions, Naval Supply Corps School, Athens, Georgia. 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

Renteria Y (2017) Respite services for post-adoption families transitioning from the child welfare system: A grant proposal. 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

Markoff J (2017) Can Robot Cars Trust Us? New York Times B1

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Elliott 2014).
This sentence cites two references (Lau and Rubinstein 2011; Elliott 2014).

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

Two authors: (Lau and Rubinstein 2011)
Three or more authors: (Bever et al. 2005)

About the journal

Full journal title	Evolving Systems
ISSN (print)	1868-6478
ISSN (online)	1868-6486
Scope	Computer Science Applications Control and Systems Engineering Control and Optimization Modelling and Simulation