How to format your references using the Soft Robotics citation style

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

Kane TJ. Education. The Long Road to Race-Blindness. Science. 2003;302(5645):571–573.

A journal article with 2 authors

Brivanlou AH, Darnell JE Jr. Signal Transduction and the Control of Gene Expression. Science. 2002;295(5556):813–818.

A journal article with 3 authors

Jalili R, Razal JM, Wallace GG. Wet-Spinning of PEDOT:PSS/Functionalized-SWNTs Composite: A Facile Route toward Production of Strong and Highly Conducting Multifunctional Fibers. Sci. Rep. 2013;33438.

A journal article with 11 or more authors

Rey Benayas JM, Newton AC, Diaz A, Bullock JM. Enhancement of Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services by Ecological Restoration: A Meta-Analysis. Science. 2009;325(5944):1121–1124.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Tadros TF. Colloids in Agrochemicals; Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA: Weinheim, Germany, 2009.

An edited book

Short Stay Management of Chest Pain; Cannon, C. P.; Peacock, W. F., Eds.; Contemporary Cardiology; Humana Press: Totowa, NJ, 2009.

A chapter in an edited book

Omosebi A, Besser RS. Nanotechnology Innovations for Low-Temperature Fuel Cells for Micro Autonomous Systems. In Selected Topics in Micro/Nano-robotics for Biomedical Applications; Guo, Y., Ed.; Springer: New York, NY, 2013; pp. 45–57.

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 Soft Robotics.

Blog post

Andrew E. Sea Lion Plays With Little Girl - But Watch What Happens When She Falls Down https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/sea-lion-plays-little-girl-watch-what-happens-when-she-falls-down/ (accessed Oct 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

Government Accountability Office. Joint Strike Fighter Acquisition: Mature Critical Technologies Needed to Reduce Risks; GAO-02-39; U.S. Government Printing Office: Washington, DC, 2001.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Fair CL. Structure of the Roberts Mountains Allochthon in the Three Bar Ranch Quadrangle, Roberts Mountains, Eureka County, Nevada. Doctoral dissertation, California State University, Long Beach: Long Beach, CA, 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 C. One Talk Show That Will Never Book a Kardashian. New York Times, 2013, A25B.

In-text citations

References should be cited in the text by sequential numbers in superscript:

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	Soft Robotics
ISSN (print)	2169-5172
ISSN (online)	2169-5180
Scope

Research and Writing Guides