How to format your references using the Journal of Symbolic Computation citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Journal of Symbolic Computation. 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	Download the output style file
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

Binzel, R.P., 2000. PLANETARY SCIENCE: Asteroids Come of Age. Science 289, 2065–2066.

A journal article with 2 authors

Guttman, M., Rinn, J.L., 2012. Modular regulatory principles of large non-coding RNAs. Nature 482, 339–346.

A journal article with 3 authors

Goldman, S.R., Ebright, R.H., Nickels, B.E., 2009. Direct detection of abortive RNA transcripts in vivo. Science 324, 927–928.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Suzuki, Y., Sakamoto, Y., Tanaka, N., Okada, H., Morikawa, Y., Ogasawara, W., 2014. Identification of the catalytic triad of family S46 exopeptidases, closely related to clan PA endopeptidases. Sci. Rep. 4, 4292.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Barone, S., Franco, E.L., 2012. Statistical and Managerial Techniques for Six Sigma Methodology. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, Chichester, UK.

An edited book

Faggini, M., Vinci, C.P. (Eds.), 2010. Decision Theory and Choices: a Complexity Approach, New Economic Windows. Springer, Milano.

A chapter in an edited book

Dalamagkidis, K., Valavanis, K.P., Piegl, L.A., 2012. Unmanned Aircraft Systems Regulation, in: Valavanis, K.P., Piegl, L.A. (Eds.), On Integrating Unmanned Aircraft Systems into the National Airspace System: Issues, Challenges, Operational Restrictions, Certification, and Recommendations. Springer Netherlands, Dordrecht, pp. 57–90.

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 Symbolic Computation.

Blog post

Taub, B., 2017. Tortoise Gets A Set Of Wheels After Injuring Legs Having Sex [WWW Document]. IFLScience. URL https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/tortoise-gets-set-wheels-after-injuring-legs-having-sex/ (accessed 10.30.18).

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, 1974. Examination of Grants Awarded to the Berkeley Unified School District and to Bilingual Children’s Television, Inc (No. B-164031(1)). U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Grigoryan, A., 2015. Feedback 2.0 in online writing instruction: Combining audio-visual and text-based commentary to enhance student revision and writing competency (Doctoral dissertation). Pepperdine University, Malibu, CA.

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

Kovaleski, S.F., Alter, A., 2015. Another Drama in Hometown of Harper Lee. New York Times C1.

In-text citations

References should be cited in the text by name and year in parentheses:

This sentence cites one reference (Binzel, 2000).
This sentence cites two references (Binzel, 2000; Guttman and Rinn, 2012).

Here are examples of in-text citations with multiple authors:

Two authors: (Guttman and Rinn, 2012)
Three or more authors: (Suzuki et al., 2014)

About the journal

Full journal title	Journal of Symbolic Computation
Abbreviation	J. Symb. Comput.
ISSN (print)	0747-7171
Scope	Algebra and Number Theory Computational Mathematics

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