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:

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
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 titleReal-Time Systems
AbbreviationReal-Time Syst.
ISSN (print)0922-6443
ISSN (online)1573-1383
ScopeComputer Networks and Communications
Computer Science Applications
Control and Systems Engineering
Electrical and Electronic Engineering
Control and Optimization
Modelling and Simulation

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