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

Thomas PC (2011) Planetary science. Cold-trapping Mars’ atmosphere. Science 332:797–798

A journal article with 2 authors

Thompson WG, Goldstein SL (2005) Open-system coral ages reveal persistent suborbital sea-level cycles. Science 308:401–404

A journal article with 3 authors

Lee MG, Park HS, Hwang HS (2010) Detection of a large-scale structure of intracluster globular clusters in the Virgo cluster. Science 328:334–336

A journal article with 5 or more authors

König M, Wiedmann S, Brüne C, et al (2007) Quantum spin hall insulator state in HgTe quantum wells. Science 318:766–770

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

P. Wen E, Ellis R, S. Pujar N (2014) Vaccine Development and Manufacturing. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ

An edited book

Ziemke T, Balkenius C, Hallam J (eds) (2012) From Animals to Animats 12: 12th International Conference on Simulation of Adaptive Behavior, SAB 2012, Odense, Denmark, August 27-30, 2012. Proceedings. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

A chapter in an edited book

Kleppisch T (2009) Phosphodiesterases in the Central Nervous System. In: Schmidt HHHW, Hofmann F, Stasch J-P (eds) cGMP: Generators, Effectors and Therapeutic Implications. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, pp 71–92

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

Carpineti A (2016) Black Hole Left Almost “Naked” After Galaxy Collision. In: IFLScience. 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 (1996) School Facilities: Profiles of School Condition by State. 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

Archibald GA (2008) Regionalizing competitive talent: An exploratory study of the role of human capital management in the context of economic integration and labor mobility. Doctoral dissertation, Capella 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

Billard M (2010) Home Is a Place to Hang His Hats. New York Times E5

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Thomas 2011).
This sentence cites two references (Thompson and Goldstein 2005; Thomas 2011).

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

Two authors: (Thompson and Goldstein 2005)
Three or more authors: (König et al. 2007)

About the journal

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