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]

Mathur, N., 2005, “The Physics Detective: Schrödinger’s Mousetrap. Part 2,” Nature, 433(7024), p. 363.

A journal article with 2 authors

[1]

Grant, P. R., and Grant, B. R., 2006, “Evolution of Character Displacement in Darwin’s Finches,” Science, 313(5784), pp. 224–226.

A journal article with 3 authors

[1]

Lu, Y., Wang, W., and Kirschner, M. W., 2015, “Specificity of the Anaphase-Promoting Complex: A Single-Molecule Study,” Science, 348(6231), p. 1248737.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

[1]

Wang, J.-S., Wang, G., Feng, X.-Q., Kitamura, T., Kang, Y.-L., Yu, S.-W., and Qin, Q.-H., 2013, “Hierarchical Chirality Transfer in the Growth of Towel Gourd Tendrils,” Sci. Rep., 3, p. 3102.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

[1]

Armaroli, N., and Balzani, V., 2010, Energy for a Sustainable World, Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim, Germany.

An edited book

[1]

Wu, W., ed., 2015, Recent Advances in Modeling Landslides and Debris Flows, Springer International Publishing, Cham.

A chapter in an edited book

[1]

Kreuzer, M., and Robbiano, L., 2016, “Computing Primary and Maximal Components,” Computational Linear and Commutative Algebra, L. Robbiano, ed., Springer International Publishing, Cham, pp. 185–242.

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]

Andrew, E., 2015, “Protein Treatment Staves Off Alzheimer’s Disease Symptoms,” IFLScience. [Online]. Available: https://www.iflscience.com/brain/protein-treatment-staves-alzheimer-s-disease-symptoms/. [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, 1991, Mass Transit Grants: Development Time Frames for Selected UMTA Projects, RCED-91-184FS, 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]

Waldron, K. D., 2017, “The Influence of Leadership Emotional Intelligence on Employee Engagement,” 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

[1]

Crow, K., 2001, “Sealed Since ’88, A Condo Garage May Soon See Some Daylight,” New York Times, p. 144.

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