How to format your references using the Machine Learning citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Machine Learning. 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

Piston, D. W. (2012). Research tools: Understand how it works. Nature, 484(7395), 440–441.

A journal article with 2 authors

Betts, J. R., & Atkinson, R. C. (2012). Education. Better research needed on the impact of charter schools. Science (New York, N.Y.), 335(6065), 171–172.

A journal article with 3 authors

Herr, A. B., Ballister, E. R., & Bjorkman, P. J. (2003). Insights into IgA-mediated immune responses from the crystal structures of human FcalphaRI and its complex with IgA1-Fc. Nature, 423(6940), 614–620.

A journal article with 8 or more authors

Hao, L., Sakurai, A., Watanabe, T., Sorensen, E., Nidom, C. A., Newton, M. A., et al. (2008). Drosophila RNAi screen identifies host genes important for influenza virus replication. Nature, 454(7206), 890–893.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Lebowitz, E. R., & Omer, H. (2013). Treating Childhood and Adolescent Anxiety. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

An edited book

Moukalled, F. (2016). The Finite Volume Method in Computational Fluid Dynamics: An Advanced Introduction with OpenFOAM® and Matlab. (L. Mangani & M. Darwish, Eds.) (1st ed. 2015., Vol. 113). Cham: Springer International Publishing.

A chapter in an edited book

Rogers, C. J., Colbert, L. H., Perkins, S. N., & Hursting, S. D. (2011). Calorie Restriction, Exercise, and Colon Cancer Prevention: A Mechanistic Perspective. In A. McTiernan (Ed.), Physical Activity, Dietary Calorie Restriction, and Cancer (pp. 69–97). New York, NY: 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 Machine Learning.

Blog post

Andrew, E. (2014, September 16). Two New Materials Mimic Octopus-Like Camouflage. IFLScience. IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/technology/two-new-materials-mimic-octopus-camouflage/. Accessed 30 October 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

Government Accountability Office. (1998). Year 2000 Computing Crisis: Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation’s Efforts to Ensure Bank Systems Are Year 2000 Compliant (No. T-AIMD-98-73). Washington, DC: 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

Berkowitz, E. S. (2013). Some novel phenomena at high density (Doctoral dissertation). University of Maryland, College Park, College Park, MD.

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

Crow, K. (2001, November 4). On Once-Bawdy 42nd Street, The Last Dirty Picture Show. New York Times, p. 148.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Piston 2012).
This sentence cites two references (Betts and Atkinson 2012; Piston 2012).

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

Two authors: (Betts and Atkinson 2012)
Three or more authors: (Hao et al. 2008)

About the journal

Full journal title	Machine Learning
Abbreviation	Mach. Learn.
ISSN (print)	0885-6125
ISSN (online)	1573-0565
Scope	Artificial Intelligence Software