How to format your references using the Computer Communications citation style

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

PaperpileThe citation style is built in and you can choose it in Settings > Citation Style or Paperpile > Citation Style in Google Docs.
EndNoteDownload the output style file
Mendeley, Zotero, Papers, and othersThe style is either built in or you can download a CSL file that is supported by most references management programs.
BibTeXBibTeX 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]
D.F. Figer, Astrophysics: Monster star found hiding in plain sight, Nature. 515 (2014) 42–44.
A journal article with 2 authors
[1]
J. Zhang, F.K.-M. Chan, Cell biology. RIPK3 takes another deadly turn, Science. 343 (2014) 1322–1323.
A journal article with 3 authors
[1]
S.K. Lower, M.F. Hochella Jr, T.J. Beveridge, Bacterial recognition of mineral surfaces: nanoscale interactions between Shewanella and alpha-FeOOH, Science. 292 (2001) 1360–1363.
A journal article with 4 or more authors
[1]
Q. Jiang, K. Karata, R. Woodgate, M.M. Cox, M.F. Goodman, The active form of DNA polymerase V is UmuD’(2)C-RecA-ATP, Nature. 460 (2009) 359–363.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book
[1]
M.T. Biegelman, Faces of Fraud, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ, 2013.
An edited book
[1]
J.F. Morrison, D.M. Birch, P. Lavoie, eds., IUTAM Symposium on Flow Control and MEMS: Proceedings of the IUTAM Symposium held at the Royal Geographical Society, 19–22 September 2006, hosted by Imperial College, London, England, Springer Netherlands, Dordrecht, 2008.
A chapter in an edited book
[1]
K. Revoredo, J.E. Ochoa-Luna, F.G. Cozman, Learning Terminologies in Probabilistic Description Logics, in: A.C. da Rocha Costa, R.M. Vicari, F. Tonidandel (Eds.), Advances in Artificial Intelligence – SBIA 2010: 20th Brazilian Symposium on Artificial Intelligence, São Bernardo Do Campo, Brazil, October 23-28, 2010. Proceedings, Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, 2010: pp. 41–50.

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 Communications.

Blog post
[1]
J. Fang, Earth’s First Land Vertebrates Used Their Lungs to Detect Sounds, IFLScience. (2015). https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/earth-s-first-land-vertebrates-used-their-lungs-detect-sounds/ (accessed October 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, Aviation Manufacturing: Status of FAA’s Efforts to Improve Certification and Regulatory Consistency, 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
[1]
C. Romer, WhatsUpDoc: A Patient Portal Technology, Doctoral dissertation, California State University, Long Beach, 2017.

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]
J. Wagner, Security in Stands Is Criticized After Clash, New York Times. (2017) D7.

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 titleComputer Communications
AbbreviationComput. Commun.
ISSN (print)0140-3664
ScopeComputer Networks and Communications

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