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

Höfte H (2001) Plant biology. A Baroque residue in red wine. Science 294:795–797

A journal article with 2 authors

Thybo H, Nielsen CA (2009) Magma-compensated crustal thinning in continental rift zones. Nature 457:873–876

A journal article with 3 authors

Miller PM, Gavrilets S, Rice WR (2006) Sexual conflict via maternal-effect genes in ZW species. Science 312:73

A journal article with 5 or more authors

Parman SW, Kurz MD, Hart SR, Grove TL (2005) Helium solubility in olivine and implications for high 3He/4He in ocean island basalts. Nature 437:1140–1143

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Zhang Y, Wen F, Xiao M (2013) Quantum Control of Multi-Wave Mixing. Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim, Germany

An edited book

Ni Y-Q, Ye X-W (eds) (2012) Proceedings of the 1st International Workshop on High-Speed and Intercity Railways: Volume 2. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

A chapter in an edited book

Volchkov VV, Volchkov VV (2009) Non-Euclidean Analogues of Plane Waves. In: Volchkov VV (ed) Harmonic Analysis of Mean Periodic Functions on Symmetric Spaces and the Heisenberg Group. Springer, London, pp 135–152

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

Andrew E (2015) Space Travel May Be Bad For Your Brain – Here’s Why. In: IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/space/space-travel-may-be-bad-your-brain-here-s-why/. 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) Private Management of Public Schools: Early Experiences in Four School Districts. 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

Adams AW (2013) Shepherd leadership of Church of God pastors and how this relates to ministerial effectiveness. Doctoral dissertation, University of Phoenix

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

Brantley B (2017) A Star Still Airlifts the Show. 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 (Höfte 2001).
This sentence cites two references (Höfte 2001; Thybo and Nielsen 2009).

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

Two authors: (Thybo and Nielsen 2009)
Three or more authors: (Parman et al. 2005)

About the journal

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