How to format your references using the Pattern Recognition Letters citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Pattern Recognition Letters. 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]

J.A. Eisner, Water vapour and hydrogen in the terrestrial-planet-forming region of a protoplanetary disk, Nature. 447 (2007) 562–564.

A journal article with 2 authors

[1]

E.C. Weatherhead, S.B. Andersen, The search for signs of recovery of the ozone layer, Nature. 441 (2006) 39–45.

A journal article with 3 authors

[1]

M.C. González, C.A. Hidalgo, A.-L. Barabási, Understanding individual human mobility patterns, Nature. 453 (2008) 779–782.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

[1]

G.P. Asner, D.E. Knapp, E.N. Broadbent, P.J.C. Oliveira, M. Keller, J.N. Silva, Selective logging in the Brazilian Amazon, Science. 310 (2005) 480–482.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

[1]

C.L. Meinert, Clinical Trials Dictionary, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ, 2012.

An edited book

[1]

A. Frigessi, P. Bühlmann, I.K. Glad, M. Langaas, S. Richardson, M. Vannucci, eds., Statistical Analysis for High-Dimensional Data: The Abel Symposium 2014, 1st ed. 2016, Springer International Publishing, Cham, 2016.

A chapter in an edited book

[1]

A. Tikhonov, A. Klypin, Properties of Voids in the Local Volume, in: H. Jerjen, B.S. Koribalski (Eds.), Galaxies in the Local Volume, Springer Netherlands, Dordrecht, 2008: pp. 31–36.

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 Pattern Recognition Letters.

Blog post

[1]

J. Fang, Mice with Malaria are More Attractive to Mosquitoes, IFLScience. (2014). https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/mice-malaria-are-more-attractive-mosquitoes/ (accessed October 30, 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, District of Columbia Public Schools: Status of Fiscal Year 1998 Roof Projects, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC, 1998.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

[1]

E.F. Walsh, The development of comprehensive criminal justice leadership standards: A modified Delphi study approach, Doctoral dissertation, University of Phoenix, 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]

L.G. (nyt), National Briefing | Washington: Chunk Of Marble Falls From Supreme Court, New York Times. (2005) A20.

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	Pattern Recognition Letters
Abbreviation	Pattern Recognit. Lett.
ISSN (print)	0167-8655
Scope	Artificial Intelligence Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition Signal Processing Software