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:

PaperpileThe citation style is built in and you can choose it in Settings > Citation Style or Paperpile > Citation Style in Google Docs.
EndNoteFind the style here: output styles overview
Mendeley, Zotero, Papers, and othersThe style is either built in or you can download a CSL file that is supported by most references management programs.
BibTeXBibTeX 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
Putterman L (2010) Behavior. Cooperation and punishment. Science 328:578–579
A journal article with 2 authors
Wang R, Yan X (2014) Superior asymmetric supercapacitor based on Ni-Co oxide nanosheets and carbon nanorods. Sci Rep 4:3712
A journal article with 3 authors
Mongillo G, Barak O, Tsodyks M (2008) Synaptic theory of working memory. Science 319:1543–1546
A journal article with 5 or more authors
Koehl A, Hu H, Maeda S, et al (2018) Structure of the µ-opioid receptor-Gi protein complex. Nature 558:547–552

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book
Hao L, Lawrence J (2006) Laser Surface Treatment of Bio-Implant Materials. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, Chichester, UK
An edited book
Fleenor BS (2015) Arterial Stiffness: Implications and Interventions. Springer International Publishing, Cham
A chapter in an edited book
MacBride F (2007) On Finite Hume. In: Cook RT (ed) The Arché Papers on the Mathematics of Abstraction. Springer Netherlands, Dordrecht, pp 85–93

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 (2014) Surinam Toad Childbirth: Trypophobics Need Not Apply. 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 (1995) Law Enforcement Block Grant Awards. 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
Nakano AM (2012) Community college swirlers and the transfer function. 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
Kenigsberg B (2017) Boris Without Beatrice. New York Times C7

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Putterman 2010).
This sentence cites two references (Putterman 2010; Wang and Yan 2014).

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

  • Two authors: (Wang and Yan 2014)
  • Three or more authors: (Koehl et al. 2018)

About the journal

Full journal titleSoft Computing
AbbreviationSoft Comput.
ISSN (print)1432-7643
ISSN (online)1433-7479
ScopeSoftware
Geometry and Topology
Theoretical Computer Science

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