How to format your references using the IFAC Journal of Systems and Control citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for IFAC Journal of Systems and 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

Macilwain, C. (2010). World view: Moment of reckoning. Nature, 464(7291), 975.

A journal article with 2 authors

Foster, G. L., & Vance, D. (2006). Negligible glacial-interglacial variation in continental chemical weathering rates. Nature, 444(7121), 918–921.

A journal article with 3 authors

Padhi, A. K., Jayaram, B., & Gomes, J. (2013). Prediction of functional loss of human angiogenin mutants associated with ALS by molecular dynamics simulations. Scientific Reports, 3, 1225.

A journal article with 8 or more authors

Nath, U., Crawford, B. C. W., Carpenter, R., & Coen, E. (2003). Genetic control of surface curvature. Science (New York, N.Y.), 299(5611), 1404–1407.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

McPhee, P. (2012). A Companion to the French Revolution. Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

An edited book

Choi, K. K. (2005). Structural Sensitivity Analysis and Optimization 2: Nonlinear Systems and Applications (N. H. Kim, Ed.). Springer.

A chapter in an edited book

Delingette, H. (2008). Biquadratic and Quadratic Springs for Modeling St Venant Kirchhoff Materials. In F. Bello & P. J. E. Edwards (Eds.), Biomedical Simulation: 4th International Symposium, ISBMS 2008, London, UK, July 7-8, 2008 Proceedings (pp. 40–48). Springer.

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 IFAC Journal of Systems and Control.

Blog post

Andrew, E. (2015, September 5). Motion Sickness Can Be Relieved By Applying An Electric Current To Your Scalp. IFLScience; IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/technology/relieve-motion-sickness-electric-current-across-brain/

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. (1990). Aviation Safety: FAA Is Considering Changes to Aviation Medical Standards (RCED-90-68FS). 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

Xiao, E. A. (2017). Understanding Employment to Entrepreneurship Transitions among Women Working in the Tech Industry [Doctoral dissertation]. Pepperdine University.

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

Baker, A. L., & McKINLEY, J. C., Jr. (2017, August 16). F.B.I. Agent Checking On Grenade Hurt in Blast. New York Times, A21.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Macilwain, 2010).
This sentence cites two references (Foster & Vance, 2006; Macilwain, 2010).

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

Two authors: (Foster & Vance, 2006)
Three authors: (Padhi et al., 2013)
6 or more authors: (Nath et al., 2003)

About the journal

Full journal title	IFAC Journal of Systems and Control
ISSN (print)	2468-6018
Scope