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

H. Hoag, "Drug delivery: brain food," Nature 510(7506), S6-7 (2014).

A journal article with 2 authors

J. P. Donnelly and J. D. Woodruff, "Intense hurricane activity over the past 5,000 years controlled by El Niño and the West African monsoon," Nature 447(7143), 465–468 (2007).

A journal article with 3 authors

H. S. Bose, V. R. Lingappa, and W. L. Miller, "Rapid regulation of steroidogenesis by mitochondrial protein import," Nature 417(6884), 87–91 (2002).

A journal article with 4 or more authors

N. Sudarsan, E. R. Lee, Z. Weinberg, R. H. Moy, J. N. Kim, K. H. Link, and R. R. Breaker, "Riboswitches in eubacteria sense the second messenger cyclic di-GMP," Science 321(5887), 411–413 (2008).

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

P. Jarry and J. N. Beneat, Microwave Amplifier and Active Circuit Design Using the Real Frequency Technique (John Wiley & Sons, Inc, 2016).

An edited book

R. B. Allen and W. G. Lee, eds., Biological Invasions in New Zealand, Ecological Studies, Analysis and Synthesis (Springer, 2006), 186.

A chapter in an edited book

P. Chelala, "A Europe of Values: From Shared History to Common Objectives," in Public Opinion Polling in a Globalized World, M. Carballo and U. Hjelmar, eds. (Springer, 2008), pp. 43–59.

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, "New Stem Cell Line Developed With Big Potential," .

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, Multiyear Leasing and Government-Wide Purchasing of Automatic Data Processing Equipment Should Result in Significant Savings (U.S. Government Printing Office, 1971).

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

D. A. Russo, "Cancer: Modeling the distribution of sizes of detectable metastases," Doctoral dissertation, California State University, Long Beach (2010).

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

B. Sisario, "Harry Styles Tops Billboard Chart," New York Times (May 22, 2017).

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

Research and Writing Guides