How to format your references using the Theory of Computing Systems citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Theory of Computing Systems. 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
1.
Baird, B.N.: Comment on “Post-wildfire logging hinders regeneration and increases fire risk.” Science. 313, 615; author reply 615 (2006)
A journal article with 2 authors
1.
Shapiro, L., Losick, R.: Retrospective. Francois Jacob (1920-2013). Science. 340, 939 (2013)
A journal article with 3 authors
1.
Toope, S.J., Tan, C.C., Fedoroff, N.V.: Science in Asia. Improving Asia-Pacific science collaboration. Science. 336, 38–39 (2012)
A journal article with 4 or more authors
1.
Cuervo, A.M., Stefanis, L., Fredenburg, R., Lansbury, P.T., Sulzer, D.: Impaired degradation of mutant alpha-synuclein by chaperone-mediated autophagy. Science. 305, 1292–1295 (2004)

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book
1.
Zhang, W., Shmulevich, I., Astola, J.: Microarray Quality Control. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ (2005)
An edited book
1.
Daneva, M., Pastor, O. eds: Requirements Engineering: Foundation for Software Quality: 22nd International Working Conference, REFSQ 2016, Gothenburg, Sweden, March 14-17, 2016, Proceedings. Springer International Publishing, Cham (2016)
A chapter in an edited book
1.
Matta, A., Runchina, M., Tolio, T.: Automated flow lines with shared buffer. In: Liberopoulos, G., Papadopoulos, C.T., Tan, B., Smith, J.M., and Gershwin, S.B. (eds.) Stochastic Modeling of Manufacturing Systems: Advances in Design, Performance Evaluation, and Control Issues. pp. 99–120. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg (2006)

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 Theory of Computing Systems.

Blog post
1.
Taub, B.: Addictions Can Be Detected In The Brain Even After Death

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: Tax Systems Modernization: Results of Review of IRS’ Third Expenditure Plan. U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC (2001)

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation
1.
Kim, H.: Linkages Between Career Development and Career Technical Education Outcomes Among High Schools in New Jersey, (2008)

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.
Slotnik, D.E.: Joyce Carol Thomas, 78, Novelist and Poet, (2016)

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 titleTheory of Computing Systems
AbbreviationTheory Comput. Syst.
ISSN (print)1432-4350
ISSN (online)1433-0490
ScopeComputational Theory and Mathematics
Theoretical Computer Science

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