How to format your references using the Natural Computing citation style

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

Butler D (2000) France plans marine research port at Brest. Nature 405:498

A journal article with 2 authors

deHaseth PL, Nilsen TW (2004) Molecular biology. When a part is as good as the whole. Science 303:1307–1308

A journal article with 3 authors

Bacles CFE, Lowe AJ, Ennos RA (2006) Effective seed dispersal across a fragmented landscape. Science 311:628

A journal article with 5 or more authors

Park H-S, Ko S-J, Park J-S, et al (2013) Redox-active charge carriers of conducting polymers as a tuner of conductivity and its potential window. Sci Rep 3:2454

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

The Minerals, Metals & Materials Society (TMS) (2011) Supplemental Proceedings. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ

An edited book

Clark JL, Speth JD (eds) (2013) Zooarchaeology and Modern Human Origins: Human Hunting Behavior during the Later Pleistocene. Springer Netherlands, Dordrecht

A chapter in an edited book

Van Assche K, Teampău P (2015) Introduction: Sulina as Center and Margin. In: Teampău P (ed) Local Cosmopolitanism: Imagining and (Re-)Making Privileged Places. Springer International Publishing, Cham, pp 49–55

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 Natural Computing.

Blog post

Hale T (2016) Open Internet Campaigners Celebrate New EU Net Neutrality Guidelines. In: IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/technology/open-internet-campaigners-celebrate-new-eu-net-neutrality-guidelines/. Accessed 30 Oct 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 (2006) Child Care and Early Childhood Education: More Information Sharing and Program Review by HHS Could Enhance Access for Families with Limited English Proficiency (Vietnamese Version). 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

Roberson BN (2013) Motivation towards learning perceived in Socratic seminar versus traditional lecture. Doctoral dissertation, Pepperdine University

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

Chira S (2017) Mixed Signals on the Runways. New York Times D1

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Butler 2000).
This sentence cites two references (Butler 2000; deHaseth and Nilsen 2004).

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

Two authors: (deHaseth and Nilsen 2004)
Three or more authors: (Park et al. 2013)

About the journal

Full journal title	Natural Computing
Abbreviation	Nat. Comput.
ISSN (print)	1567-7818
ISSN (online)	1572-9796
Scope	Computer Science Applications