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

Bishop, D. V. M. (2013). Cerebral asymmetry and language development: cause, correlate, or consequence? Science 340, 1230531.

A journal article with 2 authors

Kriwacki, R. W., and Yoon, M.-K. (2011). Cell biology. Fishing in the nuclear pore. Science 333, 44–45.

A journal article with 3 authors

Yabuta, N. H., Sawatari, A., and Callaway, E. M. (2001). Two functional channels from primary visual cortex to dorsal visual cortical areas. Science 292, 297–300.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Song, I., Zuckerman, B., Weinberger, A. J., and Becklin, E. E. (2005). Extreme collisions between planetesimals as the origin of warm dust around a Sun-like star. Nature 436, 363–365.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Bisen, P. S., and Raghuvanshi, R. (2013). Emerging Epidemics. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

An edited book

Gairing, M., and Savani, R. eds. (2016). Algorithmic Game Theory: 9th International Symposium, SAGT 2016, Liverpool, UK, September 19–21, 2016, Proceedings. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer.

A chapter in an edited book

Širca, S., and Horvat, M. (2012). “Statistical Analysis and Modeling of Data,” in Computational Methods for Physicists: Compendium for Students Graduate Texts in Physics., ed. M. Horvat (Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer), 207–275.

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

Taub, B. (2016). “Princess Leia Brainwaves” Help Consolidate Memories While We Sleep. 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 (1979). Women in the Workplace: An Annotated Bibliography. 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

Boerger, E. M. (2014). Natural regeneration dynamics of red oak seedlings in Mississippi bottomland forests.

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

Greenhouse, L. (2006). Supreme Court Weighs The Meaning of ‘Obvious.’ New York Times, C3.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Bishop, 2013).
This sentence cites two references (Kriwacki and Yoon, 2011; Bishop, 2013).

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

Two authors: (Kriwacki and Yoon, 2011)
Three or more authors: (Song et al., 2005)

About the journal

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

Research and Writing Guides