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

Corma, A. (2009). Materials chemistry: Catalysts made thinner. Nature, 461(7261), 182–183.

A journal article with 2 authors

Singer, P. A., & Daar, A. S. (2001). Harnessing genomics and biotechnology to improve global health equity. Science (New York, N.Y.), 294(5540), 87–89.

A journal article with 3 authors

Yu, Y., Huang, L., & Cao, L. (2014). Semiconductor solar superabsorbers. Scientific Reports, 4, 4107.

A journal article with 8 or more authors

Scott, J. J., Oh, D.-C., Yuceer, M. C., Klepzig, K. D., Clardy, J., & Currie, C. R. (2008). Bacterial protection of beetle-fungus mutualism. Science (New York, N.Y.), 322(5898), 63.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Mittleman, A. L. (2011). A Short History of Jewish Ethics. Wiley-Blackwell.

An edited book

Setola, R., & Geretshuber, S. (Eds.). (2009). Critical Information Infrastructure Security: Third International Workshop, CRITIS 2008, Rome, Italy, October13-15, 2008. Revised Papers (Vol. 5508). Springer.

A chapter in an edited book

Ahonen, P., Alahuhta, P., Daskala, B., Delaitre, S., Hert, P. D., Lindner, R., Maghiros, I., Moscibroda, A., Schreurs, W., & Verlinden, M. (2010). Threats and vulnerabilities. In P. Alahuhta, B. Daskala, S. Delaitre, P. D. Hert, R. Lindner, I. Maghiros, A. Moscibroda, W. Schreurs, M. Verlinden, D. Wright, M. Friedewald, Y. Punie, S. Gutwirth, & E. Vildjiounaite (Eds.), Safeguards in a World of Ambient Intelligence (pp. 143–178). Springer Netherlands.

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, April 28). Can Wearing Orange-Tinted Glasses Before Bed Help You Sleep? Only One Way To Find Out…. IFLScience; IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/can-wearing-orange-tinted-glasses-bed-help-you-sleep-only-one-way-find-out/

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). IT Dashboard: Accuracy Has Improved, and Additional Efforts Are Under Way to Better Inform Decision Making (GAO-12-210). 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

Alajmi, H. (2012). Pre-Islamic Poetry and Speech Act Theory: Al-A`shá, Bishr ibn Abī Khāzim, and al-Hujayjah [Doctoral dissertation]. Indiana 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

Cooper, M. (2017, May 9). 6 Composers Chosen For Miller Portraits. 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 (Corma, 2009).
This sentence cites two references (Corma, 2009; Singer & Daar, 2001).

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

Two authors: (Singer & Daar, 2001)
Three authors: (Yu et al., 2014)
6 or more authors: (Scott et al., 2008)

About the journal

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