How to format your references using the IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control. 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

[1]

D. Grünbaum, “Ecology. Peter principle packs a peck of phytoplankton,” Science, vol. 323, no. 5917, pp. 1022–1023, Feb. 2009.

A journal article with 2 authors

[1]

B. Crespi and S. Springer, “Ecology. Social slime molds meet their match,” Science, vol. 299, no. 5603, pp. 56–57, Jan. 2003.

A journal article with 3 authors

[1]

J. L. Blois, J. L. McGuire, and E. A. Hadly, “Small mammal diversity loss in response to late-Pleistocene climatic change,” Nature, vol. 465, no. 7299, pp. 771–774, Jun. 2010.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

[1]

P. Bieling et al., “Reconstitution of a microtubule plus-end tracking system in vitro,” Nature, vol. 450, no. 7172, pp. 1100–1105, Dec. 2007.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

[1]

P. Micouin, Model-Based Systems Engineering. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2014.

An edited book

[1]

G. B. Halt Jr., Intellectual Property in Consumer Electronics, Software and Technology Startups. New York, NY: Springer, 2014.

A chapter in an edited book

[1]

H. M. Nguyen and D. S. Naidu, “Optimal Power Conversion of Standalone Wind Energy Conversion Systems Using Fuzzy Adaptive Control,” in IAENG Transactions on Engineering Technologies: Special Issue of the World Congress on Engineering and Computer Science 2012, H. K. Kim, S.-I. Ao, M. A. Amouzegar, and B. B. Rieger, Eds., in Lecture Notes in Electrical Engineering. Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands, 2014, pp. 51–66.

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 IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control.

Blog post

[1]

J. Fang, “Here’s How Scarce Wild Prey Must Be Before Big Cats Kill Livestock,” IFLScience, Nov. 06, 2015. https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/heres-how-scarce-wild-prey-must-be-big-cats-kill-livestock/ (accessed Oct. 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

[1]

Government Accountability Office, “Vocational Education: Status in 2-Year Colleges in 1990-91 and Early Signs of Change,” U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC, HRD-93-89, Aug. 1993.

Theses and dissertations

Theses including Ph.D. dissertations, Master's theses or Bachelor theses follow the basic format outlined below.

Doctoral dissertation

[1]

T. Ho, “The influence of physical activity and unsafe neighborhoods on the development of gestational diabetes among women in California,” Doctoral dissertation, California State University, Long Beach, Long Beach, CA, 2012.

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

[1]

B. Hubbard, “Assad’s Lesson From Aleppo: Force Works,” New York Times, p. A1, Dec. 16, 2016.

In-text citations

References should be cited in the text by sequential numbers in square brackets:

This sentence cites one reference [1].
This sentence cites two references [1], [2].
This sentence cites four references [1]–[4].

About the journal

Full journal title	IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control
Abbreviation	IEEE Trans. Automat. Contr.
ISSN (print)	0018-9286
Scope	Computer Science Applications Control and Systems Engineering Electrical and Electronic Engineering

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