How to format your references using the Soft Computing citation style

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

Bayry J (2008) Journal club. An immunologist applauds a protein that prunes intolerant white blood cells. Nature 456:285

A journal article with 2 authors

Bose SK, Marder TB (2015) ORGANIC CATALYSIS. A leap ahead for activating C-H bonds. Science 349:473–474

A journal article with 3 authors

Andrews-Hanna JC, Zuber MT, Banerdt WB (2008) The Borealis basin and the origin of the martian crustal dichotomy. Nature 453:1212–1215

A journal article with 5 or more authors

Hunt B, Pratt E, Gadagkar V, et al (2009) Evidence for a superglass state in solid 4He. Science 324:632–636

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Lalena JN, Cleary DA (2005) Principles of Inorganic Materials Design. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ

An edited book

Ambrus M, Wessel RA (eds) (2015) Netherlands Yearbook of International Law 2014: Between Pragmatism and Predictability: Temporariness in International Law. T.M.C. Asser Press, The Hague

A chapter in an edited book

Mobilio S (2015) Introduction to Matter Radiation Interaction. In: Mobilio S, Boscherini F, Meneghini C (eds) Synchrotron Radiation: Basics, Methods and Applications. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, pp 107–143

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 Soft Computing.

Blog post

Andrew E (2015) Here’s What 1930s Fashion Designers Thought We’d Be Wearing In The Year 2000. In: IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/environment/heres-what-1930s-fashion-designers-thought-wed-be-wearing-year-2000/. 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 (2000) Joint Strike Fighter Acquisition: Development Schedule Should Be Changed to Reduce Risks. 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

Sewell A (2013) A typology of sampling in hip-hop. Doctoral dissertation, Indiana 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

St. John Kelly E (1995) The Storefront Psychic: A Peek Inside. New York Times 131

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Bayry 2008).
This sentence cites two references (Bayry 2008; Bose and Marder 2015).

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

Two authors: (Bose and Marder 2015)
Three or more authors: (Hunt et al. 2009)

About the journal

Full journal title	Soft Computing
Abbreviation	Soft Comput.
ISSN (print)	1432-7643
ISSN (online)	1433-7479
Scope	Software Geometry and Topology Theoretical Computer Science