How to format your references using the Robotics citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Robotics. 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

Ward, M.D. Materials Science. Snapshots of Crystal Growth. Science 2005, 308, 1566–1567.

A journal article with 2 authors

Thoroughman, K.A.; Shadmehr, R. Learning of Action through Adaptive Combination of Motor Primitives. Nature 2000, 407, 742–747.

A journal article with 3 authors

Schwartz, J.H.; Tattersall, I.; Chi, Z. Comment on “A Complete Skull from Dmanisi, Georgia, and the Evolutionary Biology of Early Homo.” Science 2014, 344, 360.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Strom, J.O.; Ingberg, E.; Theodorsson, E.; Theodorsson, A. Effects of High and Low 17β-Estradiol Doses on Focal Cerebral Ischemia: Negative Results. Sci. Rep. 2013, 3, 3111.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Sage, A.P.; Rouse, W.B. Economic Systems Analysis and Assessment; John Wiley & Sons, Inc.: Hoboken, NJ, 2011; ISBN 9781118015490.

An edited book

Formal Techniques for Networked and Distributed Systems - FORTE 2005: 25th IFIP WG 6.1 International Conference, Taipei, Taiwan, October 2-5, 2005. Proceedings; Wang, F., Ed.; Lecture Notes in Computer Science; Springer: Berlin, Heidelberg, 2005; Vol. 3731; ISBN 9783540291893.

A chapter in an edited book

Dershowitz, N.; Hanna, Z.; Nadel, A. A Scalable Algorithm for Minimal Unsatisfiable Core Extraction. In Theory and Applications of Satisfiability Testing - SAT 2006: 9th International Conference, Seattle, WA, USA, August 12-15, 2006. Proceedings; Biere, A., Gomes, C.P., Eds.; Lecture Notes in Computer Science; Springer: Berlin, Heidelberg, 2006; pp. 36–41 ISBN 9783540372066.

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.

Blog post

Luntz, S. Rhinos Escape Caught On Video Available online: https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/rhinos-escape-video/ (accessed on 30 October 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 Federal Software Licenses: Most Agencies Have Reported Planned Actions to Address Our Prior Recommendations on Software License Management; U.S. Government Printing Office: Washington, DC, 2014;

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Zhang, X. Electroweak Interactions and the Delta Resonance in a Chiral Effective Field Theory for Nuclei. Doctoral dissertation, Indiana University: Bloomington, IN, 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

Kelly, M. THE 1992 CAMPAIGN: The Democrats; Clinton Says He’s Not Leaning Left but Taking a New “Third Way.” New York Times 1992, 17.

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
ISSN (online)	2218-6581
Scope