How to format your references using the Distributed Computing citation style

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

Koen, D.: Nuts and bolts. Nature. 426, 588 (2003)

A journal article with 2 authors

Bunge, H.P., Grand, S.P.: Mesozoic plate-motion history below the northeast Pacific Ocean from seismic images of the subducted Farallon slab. Nature. 405, 337–340 (2000)

A journal article with 3 authors

Weaver, B.A.A., Silk, A.D., Cleveland, D.W.: Cell biology: nondisjunction, aneuploidy and tetraploidy. Nature. 442, E9-10; discussion E10 (2006)

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Graetz, N., Friedman, J., Osgood-Zimmerman, A., Burstein, R., Biehl, M.H., Shields, C., Mosser, J.F., Casey, D.C., Deshpande, A., Earl, L., Reiner, R.C., Ray, S.E., Fullman, N., Levine, A.J., Stubbs, R.W., Mayala, B.K., Longbottom, J., Browne, A.J., Bhatt, S., Weiss, D.J., Gething, P.W., Mokdad, A.H., Lim, S.S., Murray, C.J.L., Gakidou, E., Hay, S.I.: Mapping local variation in educational attainment across Africa. Nature. 555, 48–53 (2018)

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Pagliaro, L.A., Pagliaro, A.M.: Handbook of Child and Adolescent Drug and Substance Abuse. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ (2011)

An edited book

Gavrilova, M.L., Tan, C.J.K., Thapliyal, H., Ranganathan, N. eds: Transactions on Computational Science XXIV: Special Issue on Reversible Computing. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg (2014)

A chapter in an edited book

Balen, A.: Polycystic Ovary Versus Polycystic Ovary Syndrome. In: Dunaif, A., Chang, R.J., Franks, S., and Legro, R.S. (eds.) Polycystic Ovary Syndrome: Current Controversies, From The Ovary To The Pancreas. pp. 37–49. Humana Press, Totowa, NJ (2008)

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 Distributed Computing.

Blog post

Fang, J.: Pizzlies and Other Hybrids Won’t Become More Common With Climate Change

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: Cleanup Technology: Better Management for DOE’s Technology Development Program. U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC (1992)

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Jones, C.: Evolutionary changes in development associated with a transition in larval nutritional mode in spiralians, (2015)

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

Kishkovsky, S.: Georgia Is Warned by Russia Against Plans to Join NATO, (2008)

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	Distributed Computing
Abbreviation	Distrib. Comput.
ISSN (print)	0178-2770
ISSN (online)	1432-0452
Scope	Computational Theory and Mathematics Computer Networks and Communications Hardware and Architecture Theoretical Computer Science