How to format your references using the Frontiers in Robotics and AI citation style

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

Long, T. E. (2014). Materials science. Toward recyclable thermosets. Science 344, 706–707.

A journal article with 2 authors

Zhang, G., and David Lou, X. W. (2013). Controlled growth of NiCo₂O₄ nanorods and ultrathin nanosheets on carbon nanofibers for high-performance supercapacitors. Sci. Rep. 3, 1470.

A journal article with 3 authors

Shubin, N., Tabin, C., and Carroll, S. (2009). Deep homology and the origins of evolutionary novelty. Nature 457, 818–823.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Todorov, A., Mandisodza, A. N., Goren, A., and Hall, C. C. (2005). Inferences of competence from faces predict election outcomes. Science 308, 1623–1626.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Meiswinkel, R., Meyer, J., and Schnell, J. (2013). Design and Construction of Nuclear Power Plants. Weinheim, Germany: Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA.

An edited book

Navab, N., and Jannin, P. eds. (2010). Information Processing in Computer-Assisted Interventions: First International Conference, IPCAI 2010, Geneva, Switzerland, June 23, 2010. Proceedings. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer.

A chapter in an edited book

Knepper, M. M., Fox, K. L., and Frieder, O. (2009). “A Prototype Search Toolkit,” in Computational Methods for Counterterrorism, eds. S. Argamon and N. Howard (Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer), 51–64.

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 Frontiers in Robotics and AI.

Blog post

Andrew, E. (2014). What The Heck Is This Creature? IFLScience. Available at: https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/what-heck-creature/ (Accessed October 30, 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 (2015). Space Acquisitions: Space Based Infrared System Could Benefit from Technology Insertion Planning. 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

Fails, J. A. (2009). Mobile collaboration for young children: Reading and creating stories. College Park, MD: University of Maryland, College Park.

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

Crow, K. (2001). New Bus Shelters on the Way, Customized for Your Corner. New York Times, 146.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Long, 2014).
This sentence cites two references (Zhang and David Lou, 2013; Long, 2014).

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

Two authors: (Zhang and David Lou, 2013)
Three or more authors: (Todorov et al., 2005)

About the journal

Full journal title	Frontiers in Robotics and AI
Abbreviation	Front. Robot. AI
ISSN (online)	2296-9144
Scope