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

Radick, G. HISTORY OF SCIENCE. Beyond the “Mendel-Fisher Controversy.” Science 2015, 350, 159–160.

A journal article with 2 authors

Anderson, D.M.; Archer, D. Glacial--Interglacial Stability of Ocean PH Inferred from Foraminifer Dissolution Rates. Nature 2002, 416, 70–73.

A journal article with 3 authors

Wang, L.; Baade, D.; Patat, F. Spectropolarimetric Diagnostics of Thermonuclear Supernova Explosions. Science 2007, 315, 212–214.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

He, W.; Huang, K.; Ning, N.; Ramanathan, K.; Li, G.; Jiang, Y.; Sze, J.; Shi, L.; Zhao, R.; Pei, J. Enabling an Integrated Rate-Temporal Learning Scheme on Memristor. Sci. Rep. 2014, 4, 4755.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Bachmutsky, A. System Design for Telecommunication Gateways; John Wiley & Sons, Ltd: Chichester, UK, 2010; ISBN 9780470710746.

An edited book

Handbook of Petroleum Processing; Treese, S.A., Pujadó, P.R., Jones, D.S.J., Eds.; 2nd ed. 2015.; Springer International Publishing: Cham, 2015; ISBN 9783319145280.

A chapter in an edited book

Kothare, M.V.; Wan, Z. A Computationally Efficient Scheduled Model Predictive Control Algorithm for Control of a Class of Constrained Nonlinear Systems. In Assessment and Future Directions of Nonlinear Model Predictive Control; Findeisen, R., Allgöwer, F., Biegler, L.T., Eds.; Lecture Notes in Control and Information Sciences; Springer: Berlin, Heidelberg, 2007; pp. 49–62 ISBN 9783540726982.

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

O`Callaghan, J. Earth Used To Be Orange Available online: https://www.iflscience.com/space/earth-used-look-orange/ (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 Bridge Improvements: States Exercise Discretion in Selecting Projects Using Federal-Aid Funds; U.S. Government Printing Office: Washington, DC, 1988;

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Ramakrishnan, L. Multi-Level Adaptation for Performability in Dynamic Web Service Workflows. Doctoral dissertation, Indiana University: Bloomington, IN, 2009.

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

Hodgman, J. Bonus Advice From Judge John Hodgman. New York Times 2017, MM18.

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

Research and Writing Guides