How to format your references using the Computers citation style

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

Seeliger, J.C. Scientists Must Be Taught to Manage. Nature 2012, 483, 511.

A journal article with 2 authors

Süsstrunk, R.; Huber, S.D. PHYSICS. Observation of Phononic Helical Edge States in a Mechanical Topological Insulator. Science 2015, 349, 47–50.

A journal article with 3 authors

Buehler, M.J.; Abraham, F.F.; Gao, H. Hyperelasticity Governs Dynamic Fracture at a Critical Length Scale. Nature 2003, 426, 141–146.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Tanaka, Y.; Fukushima, H.; Okanoya, K.; Myowa-Yamakoshi, M. Mothers’ Multimodal Information Processing Is Modulated by Multimodal Interactions with Their Infants. Sci. Rep. 2014, 4, 6623.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Deuff, D.; Cosquer, M. User-Centered Agile Method; John Wiley & Sons, Inc.: Hoboken, NJ USA, 2013; ISBN 9781118574829.

An edited book

Trauma Team Dynamics: A Trauma Crisis Resource Management Manual; Gillman, L.M., Widder, S., Blaivas MD, M., Karakitsos, D., Eds.; 1st ed. 2016.; Springer International Publishing: Cham, 2016; ISBN 9783319165851.

A chapter in an edited book

Haselmann, T.; Vossen, G. Software-as-a-Service in Small and Medium Enterprises: An Empirical Attitude Assessment. In Web Information System Engineering – WISE 2011: 12th International Conference, Sydney, Australia, October 13-14, 2011. Proceedings; Bouguettaya, A., Hauswirth, M., Liu, L., Eds.; Lecture Notes in Computer Science; Springer: Berlin, Heidelberg, 2011; pp. 43–56 ISBN 9783642244339.

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 Computers.

Blog post

Carpineti, A. Pluto’s Interaction With The Solar Wind Is Completely Unique (accessed on 30 October 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 Education and Employment Issue Area Plan: Fiscal Years 1995-96; U.S. Government Printing Office: Washington, DC, 1995;

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Becknell, J.M. Listening to Narratives of War. Doctoral dissertation, Pacifica Graduate Institute: Carpinteria, CA, 2013.

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

Anderson, J. A Call to ‘Respect the Feathers.’ New York Times 2016, C1.

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	Computers
ISSN (online)	2073-431X
Scope