How to format your references using the Biomedical Optics Express citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Biomedical Optics Express. 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

M. Serrano, "Cancer: final act of senescence," Nature 479(7374), 481–482 (2011).

A journal article with 2 authors

R. M. Steinman and J. Banchereau, "Taking dendritic cells into medicine," Nature 449(7161), 419–426 (2007).

A journal article with 3 authors

P. Hauke, L. Tagliacozzo, and M. Lewenstein, "Physics. Speeding up quantum field theories," Science 336(6085), 1122–1123 (2012).

A journal article with 4 or more authors

J. Nishio, J. L. Gaglia, S. E. Turvey, C. Campbell, C. Benoist, and D. Mathis, "Islet recovery and reversal of murine type 1 diabetes in the absence of any infused spleen cell contribution," Science 311(5768), 1775–1778 (2006).

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

K. Cobb, The Blackwell Guide to Theology and Popular Culture (Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 2008).

An edited book

B. Shi and B. C. Sommerlad, eds., Cleft Lip and Palate Primary Repair (Springer, 2013).

A chapter in an edited book

B. Fahy and V. W. Vadillo, "From Magellan to Urdaneta: The Early Spanish Exploration of the Pacific and the Establishment of the Manila Acapulco Galleon Trade," in Early Navigation in the Asia-Pacific Region: A Maritime Archaeological Perspective, C. Wu, ed. (Springer, 2016), pp. 75–89.

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 Biomedical Optics Express.

Blog post

E. Andrew, "These Glasses Block Facial Recognition Technology," https://www.iflscience.com/technology/japanese-researchers-design-glasses-block-facial-recognition-technology/.

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, Motor Carrier Academy (U.S. Government Printing Office, 1994).

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

N. R. Harper, "The Relationship between Worry Symptoms of Generalized Anxiety Disorder and True Memory, False Memory, and Metamemory," Doctoral dissertation, Southern Illinois University (2017).

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

S. Hodara, "A Bucolic Feel, Open Space and a Sense of Community," New York Times (December 14, 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 title	Biomedical Optics Express
ISSN (online)	2156-7085
Scope