How to format your references using the The Visual Computer citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for The Visual Computer. 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

Butterfield, N.J.: Paleontology. Terminal developments in Ediacaran embryology. Science. 334, 1655–1656 (2011)

A journal article with 2 authors

Lazazzera, B.A., Hughes, D.: Genetics: Location affects sporulation. Nature. 525, 42–43 (2015)

A journal article with 3 authors

Nishida, K., Montagner, J.-P., Kawakatsu, H.: Global surface wave tomography using seismic hum. Science. 326, 112 (2009)

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Wang, W., Guo, S., Lee, I., Ahmed, K., Zhong, J., Favors, Z., Zaera, F., Ozkan, M., Ozkan, C.S.: Hydrous ruthenium oxide nanoparticles anchored to graphene and carbon nanotube hybrid foam for supercapacitors. Sci. Rep. 4, 4452 (2014)

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Heimann, R.B.: Classic and Advanced Ceramics. Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim, Germany (2010)

An edited book

Montavon, G., Orr, G.B., Müller, K.-R. eds: Neural Networks: Tricks of the Trade: Second Edition. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg (2012)

A chapter in an edited book

Flores, R.: Making Sense of Suffering: Insights from Buddhism and Critical Social Science. In: Anderson, R.E. (ed.) World Suffering and Quality of Life. pp. 65–73. Springer Netherlands, Dordrecht (2015)

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 The Visual Computer.

Blog post

O`Callaghan, J.: No, That Incredible Atlas V Launch Was Not A UFO

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: Aviation Safety: Slow Progress, Uncertain Future Threaten FAA Program To Measure Safety. U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC (1992)

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Sheah, J.: Reading Dreams: Representation of Dreams Through Artists’ Books, (2015)

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

Corkery, M., Cowley, S.: For Better or Worse, Debt Reaches New Peak, (2017)

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	The Visual Computer
Abbreviation	Vis. Comput.
ISSN (print)	0178-2789
ISSN (online)	1432-2315
Scope	Computer Graphics and Computer-Aided Design Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition Software