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

van der Hilst, R.D.: Geophysics. Changing views on Earth’s deep mantle. Science. 306, 817–818 (2004)

A journal article with 2 authors

Smith, J.L., Sherman, D.H.: Biochemistry. An enzyme assembly line. Science. 321, 1304–1305 (2008)

A journal article with 3 authors

Burtally, N., King, P.J., Swift, M.R.: Spontaneous air-driven separation in vertically vibrated fine granular mixtures. Science. 295, 1877–1879 (2002)

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Samatey, F.A., Imada, K., Nagashima, S., Vonderviszt, F., Kumasaka, T., Yamamoto, M., Namba, K.: Structure of the bacterial flagellar protofilament and implications for a switch for supercoiling. Nature. 410, 331–337 (2001)

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Rider, M.J.: Design and Analysis of Mechanisms. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, Chichester, UK (2015)

An edited book

Dronamraju, K.R., Francomano, C.A. eds: Victor McKusick and the History of Medical Genetics. Springer, New York, NY (2012)

A chapter in an edited book

Saguna, Zaslavsky, A., Chakraborty, D.: CrysP: Multi-Faceted Activity-Infused Presence in Emerging Social Networks. In: Balandin, S., Dunaytsev, R., and Koucheryavy, Y. (eds.) Smart Spaces and Next Generation Wired/Wireless Networking: Third Conference on Smart Spaces, ruSMART 2010, and 10th International Conference, NEW2AN 2010, St. Petersburg, Russia, August 23-25, 2010. Proceedings. pp. 50–61. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg (2010)

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

Luntz, S.: A Rope Test Could Save Us From Monkey Diseases

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: Civil Agencies Information Systems Issue Area: Active Assignments. U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC (1998)

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Lopez, C.: A community-based outreach program for Latinos in Los Angeles County supporting mental health awareness and treatment: A grant proposal, (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

Vecsey, G.: Parallel Coaching Paths, Decades Apart, (2011)

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