How to format your references using the Real-Time Systems citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Real-Time Systems. 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

Hurst JK (2010) Chemistry. In pursuit of water oxidation catalysts for solar fuel production. Science 328:315–316

A journal article with 2 authors

Shields GA, Kasting JF (2007) Palaeoclimatology: evidence for hot early oceans? Nature 447:E1; discussion E1-2

A journal article with 3 authors

Showalter MR, Hedman MM, Burns JA (2011) The impact of comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 sends ripples through the rings of Jupiter. Science 332:711–713

A journal article with 5 or more authors

Johnson N, Zhao G, Hunsader E, et al (2013) Abrupt rise of new machine ecology beyond human response time. Sci Rep 3:2627

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Hoffman RV (2004) Organic Chemistry. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ

An edited book

Toebes B, Ferguson R, Markovic MM, Nnamuchi O (eds) (2014) The Right to Health: A Multi-Country Study of Law, Policy and Practice. T.M.C. Asser Press, The Hague

A chapter in an edited book

Waseda Y, Matsubara E, Shinoda K (2011) Reciprocal Lattice and Integrated Intensities of Crystals. In: Matsubara E, Shinoda K (eds) X-Ray Diffraction Crystallography: Introduction, Examples and Solved Problems. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, pp 169–218

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 Real-Time Systems.

Blog post

Andrew E (2014) 25 of the Most Terrifying-Looking Sea Creatures. In: IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/watch-25-most-terrifying-looking-sea-creatures/. 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

Government Accountability Office (1972) Coast Guard Postgraduate Education Program. 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

Miller RL (2015) Models for the Interaction of Structured Populations and the Environment. Doctoral dissertation, University of Louisiana

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 (2003) Learning to Be a Golightly Girl. New York Times 143

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Hurst 2010).
This sentence cites two references (Shields and Kasting 2007; Hurst 2010).

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

Two authors: (Shields and Kasting 2007)
Three or more authors: (Johnson et al. 2013)

About the journal

Full journal title	Real-Time Systems
Abbreviation	Real-Time Syst.
ISSN (print)	0922-6443
ISSN (online)	1573-1383
Scope	Computer Networks and Communications Computer Science Applications Control and Systems Engineering Electrical and Electronic Engineering Control and Optimization Modelling and Simulation