How to format your references using the Computer citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Computer. 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. Milani, “Astronomy. Extraterrestrial material--virtual or real hazards?,” Science, vol. 300, no. 5627, pp. 1882–1883, Jun. 2003.

A journal article with 2 authors

[1]

P. Primakoff and D. G. Myles, “Penetration, adhesion, and fusion in mammalian sperm-egg interaction,” Science, vol. 296, no. 5576, pp. 2183–2185, Jun. 2002.

A journal article with 3 authors

[1]

Z. B. Siu, M. B. A. Jalil, and S. G. Tan, “Topological state transport in topological insulators under the influence of hexagonal warping and exchange coupling to in-plane magnetizations,” Sci. Rep., vol. 4, p. 5062, May 2014.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

[1]

R. Yang et al., “Isolated nanographene crystals for nano-floating gate in charge trapping memory,” Sci. Rep., vol. 3, p. 2126, 2013.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

[1]

F. Pérez Fontán and P. Mariño Espiñeira, Modeling the Wireless Propagation Channel. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, 2008.

An edited book

[1]

S. Babashah, Ed., Cancer Stem Cells: Emerging Concepts and Future Perspectives in Translational Oncology, 1st ed. 2015. 1st ed. 2015.Cham: Springer International Publishing, 2015.

A chapter in an edited book

[1]

L. Tu and L. Kvasny, “American Discourses of the Digital Divide and Economic Development: A Sisyphean Order to Catch Up?,” in Social Inclusion: Societal and Organizational Implications for Information Systems: IFIP TC8 WG8.2 International Working Conference, July 12–15, 2006, Limerick, Ireland, E. M. Trauth, D. Howcroft, T. Butler, B. Fitzgerald, and J. I. DeGross, Eds., in IFIP International Federation for Information Processing. Boston, MA: Springer US, 2006, pp. 51–65.

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 Computer.

Blog post

[1]

J. Davis, “Vast Ancient River System Discovered Under The Sahara Desert,” IFLScience, Nov. 11, 2015. https://www.iflscience.com/environment/vast-ancient-river-system-discovered-under-sands-sahara-desert/ (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

[1]

Government Accountability Office, “Telecommunications: FCC Has Reformed the High-Cost Program, but Oversight and Management Could be Improved,” U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC, GAO-12-738, Jul. 2012.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

[1]

Y. Sanchez, “Effectiveness of parent-child interaction therapy for Latino families: A secondary analysis of existing data,” 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

[1]

S. Kishkovsky, “Moscow Journal; Feast or Fast? Russians Just Can’t Give Up Lent,” New York Times, p. A4, Apr. 29, 2002.

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	Computer
Abbreviation	Computer (Long Beach Calif.)
ISSN (print)	0018-9162
Scope	General Computer Science

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