How to format your references using the Computational Social Networks citation style

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

1. Grantham J. Be persuasive. Be brave. Be arrested (if necessary). Nature. 2012;491:303.

A journal article with 2 authors

1. Ramos SBV, Laederach A. Molecular biology: A second layer of information in RNA. Nature. 2014;505:621–2.

A journal article with 3 authors

1. Koonin EV, Wolf YI, Karev GP. The structure of the protein universe and genome evolution. Nature. 2002;420:218–23.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

1. Sun X, Zhang X, Schuck C, Tang HX. Nonlinear optical effects of ultrahigh-Q silicon photonic nanocavities immersed in superfluid helium. Sci Rep. 2013;3:1436.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

1. Michael E, Gillian H, Stefan K, Alex L. Gramsci. Oxford, UK: John Wiley & Sons Ltd; 2012.

An edited book

1. Tosti A. Tricologia ambulatoriale: Malattie dei capelli e del cuoio capelluto. Piraccini BM, editor. Milano: Springer; 2014.

A chapter in an edited book

1. Münstedt H, Schwarzl FR. Structure and States of Polymers. In: Schwarzl FR, editor. Deformation and Flow of Polymeric Materials. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer; 2014. p. 77–120.

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 Computational Social Networks.

Blog post

1. Andrew E. Lopsided Star Explosion Helps Unravel Mystery Of Supernova. IFLScience. IFLScience; 2015.

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. Unmanned Aerial Vehicles: Progress of the Global Hawk Advanced Concept Technology Demonstration. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 2000 Apr. Report No.: NSIAD-00-78.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

1. Goldner VR. Arizona nurses’ attitudes toward legislated minimum staffing ratios: Impact on the workplace [Doctoral dissertation]. [Phoenix, AZ]: University of Phoenix; 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. Olmsted SA. DEPUTY MAYOR IDEA NOT NEW; Tammany Objection to the Charter Plan Regarded as Baseless. New York Times. 1936 Nov 2;BOOKS20.

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	Computational Social Networks
Abbreviation	Comput. Soc. Netw.
ISSN (online)	2197-4314
Scope