How to format your references using the Natural Computing citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Natural 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 reference managers.
BibTeX	BibTeX styles 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

Bains W (2012) Comment on “Orthographic processing in baboons (Papio papio).” Science 337:1173; author reply 1173

A journal article with 2 authors

Brody H, Miko I (2012) Lenses on biology. Nature 483:S1

A journal article with 3 authors

Schibler J, Elsner J, Schlumbaum A (2014) Incorporation of aurochs into a cattle herd in Neolithic Europe: single event or breeding? Sci Rep 4:5798

A journal article with 5 or more authors

Vöhringer-Martinez E, Hansmann B, Hernandez-Soto H, et al (2007) Water catalysis of a radical-molecule gas-phase reaction. Science 315:497–501

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Shi Z-J (2014) Homogeneous Catalysis for Unreactive Bond Activation. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ

An edited book

Popovich VV, Claramunt C, Schrenk M, Korolenko KV (eds) (2009) Information Fusion and Geographic Information Systems: Proceedings of the Fourth International Workshop, 17-20 May 2009. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

A chapter in an edited book

Chen M (2015) Taiwan–India Relations Under the Shadow of a Rising China. In: Naidu GVC, Chen M, Narayanan R (eds) India and China in the Emerging Dynamics of East Asia. Springer India, New Delhi, pp 43–58

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 Natural Computing.

Blog post

Andrew E (2015) How Poo-Sniffing Detective Dogs Can Save Elusive, Rare Gorillas. In: IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/how-poo-sniffing-detective-dogs-can-save-elusive-rare-gorillas/. 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 (1991) Medical ADP Systems: Automated Medical Records Hold Promise to Improve Patient Care. 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

Fu J (2013) Tartuffe Lab: A developing work. 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

Carlson L (2012) First the Proposal, Then Remodeling. New York Times ST6

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Bains 2012).
This sentence cites two references (Brody and Miko 2012; Bains 2012).

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

Two authors: (Brody and Miko 2012)
Three or more authors: (Vöhringer-Martinez et al. 2007)

About the journal

Full journal title	Natural Computing
Abbreviation	Nat. Comput.
ISSN (print)	1567-7818
ISSN (online)	1572-9796
Scope	Computer Science Applications