How to format your references using the Science of Computer Programming citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Science of Computer Programming. 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

[1]

D. Goldston, Beware politicians bearing gifts, Nature. 457 (2009) 649.

A journal article with 2 authors

[1]

E. Ranta, V. Kaitala, Comment on “Stability via asynchrony in Drosophila metapopulations with low migration rates,” Science. 314 (2006) 420; author reply 420.

A journal article with 3 authors

[1]

G. Walkden, J. Parker, S. Kelley, A late Triassic impact ejecta layer in southwestern Britain, Science. 298 (2002) 2185–2188.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

[1]

G. Huang, C. Hou, Y. Shao, H. Wang, Q. Zhang, Y. Li, M. Zhu, Highly strong and elastic graphene fibres prepared from universal graphene oxide precursors, Sci. Rep. 4 (2014) 4248.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

[1]

J.K. Fink, Metallized and Magnetic Polymers, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ, 2016.

An edited book

[1]

A.E. Maynard, Learning in Cultural Context: Family, Peers, and School, Springer US, Boston, MA, 2005.

A chapter in an edited book

[1]

R.X. Gao, R. Yan, Discrete Wavelet Transform, in: R. Yan (Ed.), Wavelets: Theory and Applications for Manufacturing, Springer US, Boston, MA, 2011: pp. 49–68.

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 Science of Computer Programming.

Blog post

[1]

K. Hamilton, This New Treatment Could Make Pancreatic Cancer A Manageable Disease, IFLScience. (2017). https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/this-new-treatment-could-make-pancreatic-cancer-a-manageable-disease/ (accessed October 30, 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

[1]

Government Accountability Office, Highway Trust Fund: Nearly All States Received More Funding Than They Contributed in Highway Taxes Since 2005, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC, 2010.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

[1]

J.E. Ringberg, Daily life at Cerro León, an Early Intermediate period highland settlement in the Moche Valley, Peru, Doctoral dissertation, University of North Carolina, 2012.

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

[1]

B. Brantley, Terrors of an Unfixed Reality, New York Times. (2017) C1.

In-text citations

References should be cited in the text by sequential numbers in square brackets:

This sentence cites one reference [1].
This sentence cites two references [1,2].
This sentence cites four references [1–4].

About the journal

Full journal title	Science of Computer Programming
Abbreviation	Sci. Comput. Program.
ISSN (print)	0167-6423
Scope	Software