How to format your references using the Journal of Mechanisms and Robotics citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Journal of Mechanisms and Robotics. 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	Download the output style file
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]

Amaratunga, G. A. J., 2002, “Applied Physics. A Dawn for Carbon Electronics?,” Science, 297(5587), pp. 1657–1658.

A journal article with 2 authors

[1]

Koocher, G. P., and Keith-Spiegel, P., 2010, “Peers Nip Misconduct in the Bud,” Nature, 466(7305), pp. 438–440.

A journal article with 3 authors

[1]

Herne, M. C., Nair, J. P., and Salisbury, S. W., 2010, “Comment on ‘A Southern Tyrant Reptile,’” Science, 329(5995), pp. 1013; author reply 1013.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

[1]

Strogatz, S. H., Abrams, D. M., McRobie, A., Eckhardt, B., and Ott, E., 2005, “Theoretical Mechanics: Crowd Synchrony on the Millennium Bridge,” Nature, 438(7064), pp. 43–44.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

[1]

Tasman, A., Kay, J., and Ursano, R. J., 2013, The Psychiatric Interview, John Wiley & Sons, Oxford.

An edited book

[1]

Papadopoulou, D., ed., 2006, Cross-Linguistic Variation in Sentence Processing: Evidence from RC Attachment Preferences in Greek, Springer Netherlands, Dordrecht.

A chapter in an edited book

[1]

Cunnington, A., Patel, S., and Lyall, H., 2010, “Why Are Some Babies Still Being Infected with HIV in the UK?,” Hot Topics in Infection and Immunity in Children VI, A. Finn, N. Curtis, and A.J. Pollard, eds., Springer, New York, NY, pp. 57–71.

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 Journal of Mechanisms and Robotics.

Blog post

[1]

O`Callaghan, J., 2015, “Quantum Teleportation Breakthrough Sets Distance Record Of 100 Kilometers,” IFLScience. [Online]. Available: https://www.iflscience.com/physics/quantum-teleportation-breakthrough-sets-record-distance-100-kilometers/. [Accessed: 30-Oct-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, 2015, James Webb Space Telescope: Project on Track but May Benefit from Improved Contractor Data to Better Understand Costs, GAO-16-112, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

[1]

Tajer, S. A., 2010, “Topics in MIMO Networks,” Doctoral dissertation, Columbia 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

[1]

Murphy, M. J. O., and Schuessler, J., 2013, “Jane, Plain No More: A Year of Austen Glamour,” New York Times, p. C28.

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	Journal of Mechanisms and Robotics
Abbreviation	J. Mech. Robot.
ISSN (print)	1942-4302
ISSN (online)	1942-4310
Scope	Mechanical Engineering