How to format your references using the Machines citation style

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

PaperpileThe citation style is built in and you can choose it in Settings > Citation Style or Paperpile > Citation Style in Google Docs.
EndNoteFind the style here: output styles overview
Mendeley, Zotero, Papers, and othersThe style is either built in or you can download a CSL file that is supported by most references management programs.
BibTeXBibTeX 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.
Lewis, J. From Signals to Patterns: Space, Time, and Mathematics in Developmental Biology. Science 2008, 322, 399–403.
A journal article with 2 authors
1.
Genda, H.; Abe, Y. Enhanced Atmospheric Loss on Protoplanets at the Giant Impact Phase in the Presence of Oceans. Nature 2005, 433, 842–844.
A journal article with 3 authors
1.
Templeton, C.N.; Greene, E.; Davis, K. Allometry of Alarm Calls: Black-Capped Chickadees Encode Information about Predator Size. Science 2005, 308, 1934–1937.
A journal article with 4 or more authors
1.
Ashrafi, K.; Chang, F.Y.; Watts, J.L.; Fraser, A.G.; Kamath, R.S.; Ahringer, J.; Ruvkun, G. Genome-Wide RNAi Analysis of Caenorhabditis Elegans Fat Regulatory Genes. Nature 2003, 421, 268–272.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book
1.
Lippold, J.C. Welding Metallurgy and Weldability; John Wiley & Sons, Inc: Hoboken, NJ, 2015; ISBN 9781118960332.
An edited book
1.
Energy Economics and Financial Markets; Dorsman, A., Simpson, J.L., Westerman, W., Eds.; Springer: Berlin, Heidelberg, 2013; ISBN 9783642306006.
A chapter in an edited book
1.
Scherer, L.; Rossi, J.J. Cancer Therapeutic Applications of Ribozymes and RNAi. In Cancer Gene Therapy; Curiel, D.T., Douglas, J.T., Eds.; Contemporary Cancer Research; Humana Press: Totowa, NJ, 2005; pp. 51–63 ISBN 9781588292131.

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 Machines.

Blog post
1.
Andrew, E. After The Supermoon, Comes The Supertide Available online: https://www.iflscience.com/environment/after-supermoon-comes-supertide/ (accessed on 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
1.
Government Accountability Office Polar Satellites: Agencies Need to Address Potential Gaps in Weather and Climate Data Coverage; U.S. Government Printing Office: Washington, DC, 2011;

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation
1.
Hendricks, E.D. Teaching Teachers: A Study of Teacher Educators’ Perceptions of the Effect of Meeting Mandated NCATE Standards. Doctoral dissertation, Capella University: Minneapolis, MN, 2010.

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.
Swansburg, J. Men of Summer. New York Times 2017, BR14.

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 titleMachines
ISSN (online)2075-1702
Scope

Other styles