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:

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 reference managers.
BibTeX	BibTeX styles 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

Kilpatrick AM (2011) Globalization, land use, and the invasion of West Nile virus. Science 334:323–327

A journal article with 2 authors

Campbell P, Grayson M (2014) Assessing science. Nature 511:S49

A journal article with 3 authors

Schumacher MA, Hurlburt BK, Brennan RG (2001) Crystal structures of SarA, a pleiotropic regulator of virulence genes in S. aureus. Nature 409:215–219

A journal article with 5 or more authors

Nelson CM, Vanduijn MM, Inman JL, et al (2006) Tissue geometry determines sites of mammary branching morphogenesis in organotypic cultures. Science 314:298–300

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Cretu O, Stewart R, Berends T (2011) Risk Management for Design and Construction. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ

An edited book

Gassmann O (2016) Exploring the Field of Business Model Innovation: New Theoretical Perspectives. Springer International Publishing, Cham

A chapter in an edited book

Haim A, Portnov BA (2013) Biological Clock and its Entrainment by Photoperiod. In: Portnov BA (ed) Light Pollution as a New Risk Factor for Human Breast and Prostate Cancers. Springer Netherlands, Dordrecht, pp 25–33

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

Luntz S (2015) Eclipsing Binary Could Be A Supernova Model. In: IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/space/eclipsing-binary-way-becoming-supernova/. 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 (1994) FAA Budget: Management Attention Needed for Future Investment Decisions. 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

Coleman KM (2015) Parent involvement in the promotion of healthy outcomes for young girls: A grant writing project. Doctoral dissertation, California State University, Long Beach

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

Brantley B (2016) A High-Tech Head Trip Through an Amazon Labyrinth. New York Times C1

In-text citations

References should be cited in the text by name and year in parentheses:

This sentence cites one reference (Kilpatrick 2011).
This sentence cites two references (Kilpatrick 2011; Campbell and Grayson 2014).

Here are examples of in-text citations with multiple authors:

Two authors: (Campbell and Grayson 2014)
Three or more authors: (Nelson et al. 2006)

About the journal

Full journal title	Real-Time Systems
Abbreviation	Real-Time Syst.
ISSN (print)	0922-6443
ISSN (online)	1573-1383
Scope	Computer Networks and Communications Computer Science Applications Control and Systems Engineering Electrical and Electronic Engineering Control and Optimization Modelling and Simulation