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

Gogotsi, Y. (2010). Materials science. High-temperature rubber made from carbon nanotubes. Science 330, 1332–1333.

A journal article with 2 authors

Clutton-Brock, T., and Sheldon, B. C. (2010). Ecology. The Seven Ages of Pan. Science 327, 1207–1208.

A journal article with 3 authors

Allen, M., Raper, S., and Mitchell, J. (2001). Climate change. Uncertainty in the IPCC’s Third Assessment Report. Science 293, 430–433.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Hu, H., Ji, D., Zeng, X., Liu, K., and Gan, Q. (2013). Rainbow trapping in hyperbolic metamaterial waveguide. Sci. Rep. 3, 1249.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Chappell, D. (2008). The JCT Minor Works Building Contracts 2005. Oxford, UK: Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

An edited book

Zhukov, A. ed. (2016). Novel Functional Magnetic Materials: Fundamentals and Applications. Cham: Springer International Publishing.

A chapter in an edited book

Watkins, R. G. (2015). “Anterior Medial Approach to C1, C2, and C3,” in Surgical Approaches to the Spine, eds. R. G. Watkins III and R. G. Watkins IV (New York, NY: Springer), 27–32.

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

Luntz, S. (2015). Mice Take After Their Fathers, And We Might Too. IFLScience.

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 (2011). Commercial Aviation: Program Aimed at High-Risk Parent Abductors Could Aid in Preventing Abductions. 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

Bradley, K. A. (2014). A Tennessee Irish Picnic: Foodways and Complex Community Dynamics.

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

(nyt), S. K. (2002). World Briefing | Europe: Russia: Orthodox Church Berates Vatican. New York Times, A10.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Gogotsi, 2010).
This sentence cites two references (Clutton-Brock and Sheldon, 2010; Gogotsi, 2010).

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

Two authors: (Clutton-Brock and Sheldon, 2010)
Three or more authors: (Hu et al., 2013)

About the journal

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

Research and Writing Guides