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]

A. Abbott, Space-station airlock to serve as temporary lab, Nature. 405 (2000) 7.

A journal article with 2 authors

[1]

J.M. Blander, R. Medzhitov, Regulation of phagosome maturation by signals from toll-like receptors, Science. 304 (2004) 1014–1018.

A journal article with 3 authors

[1]

K.T. Mullen, Y.J. Kim, M. Gheiratmand, Contrast normalization in colour vision: the effect of luminance contrast on colour contrast detection, Sci. Rep. 4 (2014) 7350.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

[1]

C.E. Schwartz, C.I. Wright, L.M. Shin, J. Kagan, S.L. Rauch, Inhibited and uninhibited infants “grown up”: adult amygdalar response to novelty, Science. 300 (2003) 1952–1953.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

[1]

K. Schroeder, T. Thompson, K. Frith, D. Pencheon, Sustainable Healthcare, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, Chichester, UK, 2012.

An edited book

[1]

R. Bottiglia, F. Pichler, eds., Crowdfunding for SMEs: A European Perspective, Palgrave Macmillan UK, London, 2016.

A chapter in an edited book

[1]

I. Baud, Digitisation and Participation in Urban Governance: The Contribution of ICT-Based Spatial Knowledge Management in Indian Cities, in: G.M. Gómez, P. Knorringa (Eds.), Local Governance, Economic Development and Institutions, Palgrave Macmillan UK, London, 2016: pp. 86–97.

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]

E. Andrew, Apes Under Pressure Show Their Ingenuity – And Hint At Our Own Evolutionary Past, IFLScience. (2015). https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/apes-under-pressure-show-their-ingenuity-and-hint-our-own-evolutionary-past/ (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, Progress of the DD(X) Destroyer Program, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC, 2005.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

[1]

R.J. So, Coolie democracy: U.S.-China political and literary exchange, 1925-1955, Doctoral dissertation, Columbia University, 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. Greenhouse, The Roberts Court, Version 4.0, New York Times. (2010) WK10.

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

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