How to format your references using the Robotics and Autonomous Systems citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Robotics and Autonomous 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	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. Bally, Astrophysics: Mystery survivor of a supermassive black hole, Nature 524 (2015) 301–302.

A journal article with 2 authors

[1]

V. Smetacek, A. Zingone, Green and golden seaweed tides on the rise, Nature 504 (2013) 84–88.

A journal article with 3 authors

[1]

R. Daw, J. Finkelstein, M. Helmer, Chemistry and energy, Nature 488 (2012) 293.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

[1]

L. Sancey, V. Motto-Ros, B. Busser, S. Kotb, J.M. Benoit, A. Piednoir, F. Lux, O. Tillement, G. Panczer, J. Yu, Laser spectrometry for multi-elemental imaging of biological tissues, Sci. Rep. 4 (2014) 6065.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

[1]

D.A. Vaccari, P.F. Strom, J.E. Alleman, Environmental Biology for Engineers and Scientists, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ, 2005.

An edited book

[1]

N.C. Oza, R. Polikar, J. Kittler, F. Roli, eds., Multiple Classifier Systems: 6th International Workshop, MCS 2005, Seaside, CA, USA, June 13-15, 2005. Proceedings, Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, 2005.

A chapter in an edited book

[1]

P. Besana, D. Robertson, How Service Choreography Statistics Reduce the Ontology Mapping Problem, in: K. Aberer, K.-S. Choi, N. Noy, D. Allemang, K.-I. Lee, L. Nixon, J. Golbeck, P. Mika, D. Maynard, R. Mizoguchi, G. Schreiber, P. Cudré-Mauroux (Eds.), The Semantic Web: 6th International Semantic Web Conference, 2nd Asian Semantic Web Conference, ISWC 2007 + ASWC 2007, Busan, Korea, November 11-15, 2007. Proceedings, Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, 2007: pp. 44–57.

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 Robotics and Autonomous Systems.

Blog post

[1]

D. Andrew, How To Stop A Zombie Apocalypse – With Science, IFLScience (2016). https://www.iflscience.com/editors-blog/how-to-stop-a-zombie-apocalypse-with-science/ (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, Freight Rail Pricing: Contracts Provide Shippers and Railroads Flexibility, but High Rates Concern Some Shippers, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC, 2016.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

[1]

V.R. Nambiar, A Grounded Theory Study on Business Excellence Models in the United Arab Emirates, Doctoral dissertation, University of Phoenix, 2012.

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]

B. Kenigsberg, Betting on Zero, New York Times (2017) C6.

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	Robotics and Autonomous Systems
Abbreviation	Rob. Auton. Syst.
ISSN (print)	0921-8890
Scope	Computer Science Applications Software Control and Systems Engineering General Mathematics