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 (BOE). 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. Bystricky, "Geophysics. Mantle flow revisited," Science 301(5637), 1190–1191 (2003).

A journal article with 2 authors

R. M. Berry and J. P. Armitage, "Microbiology. How bacteria change gear," Science 320(5883), 1599–1600 (2008).

A journal article with 3 authors

J. O. Brunkard, A. M. Runkel, and P. C. Zambryski, "Evolution. Comment on “A promiscuous intermediate underlies the evolution of LEAFY DNA binding specificity,”" Science 347(6222), 621 (2015).

A journal article with 4 or more authors

C. E. Brown, L. Howe, K. Sousa, S. C. Alley, M. J. Carrozza, S. Tan, and J. L. Workman, "Recruitment of HAT complexes by direct activator interactions with the ATM-related Tra1 subunit," Science 292(5525), 2333–2337 (2001).

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

E. Liu and S. Noppe-Brandon, Imagination First (Jossey-Bass, 2011).

An edited book

J. Krogstie, K. Kautz, and D. Allen, eds., Mobile Information Systems II: IFIP International Working Conference on Mobile Information Systems, (MOBIS) Leeds, UK, December 6–7, 2005, IFIP — The International Federation for Information Processing (Springer US, 2005), 191.

A chapter in an edited book

D. François, A. Pineau, and A. Zaoui, "Viscoelasticity," in Mechanical Behaviour of Materials: Volume 1: Micro- and Macroscopic Constitutive Behaviour, A. Pineau and A. Zaoui, eds., Solid Mechanics and Its Applications (Springer Netherlands, 2012), pp. 445–505.

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, "Scientists Create Holograms that you can Touch," https://www.iflscience.com/technology/scientists-create-holograms-you-can-touch/.

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, FAA Evacuation Standards (U.S. Government Printing Office, 1993).

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

M. Shamsai, "Prefabricated Cage System for Reinforcing Concrete Members," Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University (2006).

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

R. Nordland and S. Timur, "Turkey Fires 15,000 More Public Workers in Crackdown," New York Times (November 22, 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