How to format your references using the Journal of Complexity citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Journal of Complexity. 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]
M. Kaeberlein, Lessons on longevity from budding yeast, Nature. 464 (2010) 513–519.
A journal article with 2 authors
[1]
K. Matsumoto, K. Tanaka, Neuroscience. Conflict and cognitive control, Science. 303 (2004) 969–970.
A journal article with 3 authors
[1]
E. Brooks-Pollock, G.O. Roberts, M.J. Keeling, A dynamic model of bovine tuberculosis spread and control in Great Britain, Nature. 511 (2014) 228–231.
A journal article with 4 or more authors
[1]
F. Ronquist, B. Larget, J.P. Huelsenbeck, J.B. Kadane, D. Simon, P. van der Mark, Comment on “Phylogenetic MCMC algorithms are misleading on mixtures of trees,” Science. 312 (2006) 367; author reply 367.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book
[1]
M. Epstein, The Elements of Continuum Biomechanics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, Chichester, UK, 2012.
An edited book
[1]
D.M. Whitacre, ed., Reviews of Environmental Contamination and Toxicology Volume 221, Springer, New York, NY, 2013.
A chapter in an edited book
[1]
J.A. Gorlewski, D.A. Gorlewski, T.M. Ramming, Standard 4, in: D.A. Gorlewski, T.M. Ramming (Eds.), Theory into Practice: Case Stories for School Leaders, SensePublishers, Rotterdam, 2012: pp. 51–62.

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 Journal of Complexity.

Blog post
[1]
A. Carpineti, Pluto’s Surface Might Be Resting On An Ammonia-Water Slurry, IFLScience. (2015).

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 Finance: Observations on the Effects of Budget Uncertainty on FAA, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC, 2015.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation
[1]
A.R. Royalty, U.S. Military Advisors in Iraq: A Phenomenological Research Study on the Role of National Culture on Tactical Decision-making during Wartime, Doctoral dissertation, George Washington University, 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
[1]
M.W. Walsh, A Chilly Reception, New York Times. (2015) B1.

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 titleJournal of Complexity
AbbreviationJ. Complex.
ISSN (print)0885-064X
ScopeAlgebra and Number Theory
Applied Mathematics
Control and Optimization
Numerical Analysis
Statistics and Probability

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