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

May R (2001) Risk and uncertainty. Nature 411:891

A journal article with 2 authors

Taberlet P, Cheddadi R (2002) Ecology. Quaternary refugia and persistence of biodiversity. Science 297:2009–2010

A journal article with 3 authors

Marte B, Eccleston A, Nath D (2008) Molecular cancer diagnostics. Nature 452:547

A journal article with 5 or more authors

Abzhanov A, Protas M, Grant BR, et al (2004) Bmp4 and morphological variation of beaks in Darwin’s finches. Science 305:1462–1465

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Knight HJ (2012) Patent Strategy. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, Chichester, UK

An edited book

Vinson JR, Sierakowski RL (eds) (2008) The Behavior Of Structures Composed Of Composite Materials, Second Edition. Springer Netherlands, Dordrecht

A chapter in an edited book

Leitgeb N (2009) Electromagnetic Hypersensitivity. In: Lin JC (ed) Advances in Electromagnetic Fields in Living Systems: Volume 5, Health Effects of Cell Phone Radiation. Springer, New York, NY, pp 167–197

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

Davis J (2017) No, This Survey Does Not Show That How Much Porn Men Watch Is Linked To Sexual Dysfunction. 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 (2007) Internet Infrastructure: Challenges in Developing a Public/Private Recovery Plan. 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

Pradhan SH (2017) User Interface Design, Database Connectivity, and Security in Fortified Cards. Doctoral dissertation, California State University, Long Beach

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

Vecsey G (2011) Like His Style or Not, Ryan Is a Keeper. 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 (May 2001).
This sentence cites two references (May 2001; Taberlet and Cheddadi 2002).

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

Two authors: (Taberlet and Cheddadi 2002)
Three or more authors: (Abzhanov et al. 2004)

About the journal

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