How to format your references using the Computational Optimization and Applications citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Computational Optimization and Applications. 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

Hambäck, P.A.: Ecology. A green or a prickly world? Science. 327, 1583–1584 (2010)

A journal article with 2 authors

Wilson, R.I., Nicoll, R.A.: Endogenous cannabinoids mediate retrograde signalling at hippocampal synapses. Nature. 410, 588–592 (2001)

A journal article with 3 authors

Hamilton, V.E., Christensen, P.R., Bandfield, J.L.: Planetary science: Volcanism or aqueous alteration on Mars? Nature. 421, 711–2; discussion 712-3 (2003)

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Rubin, C.-J., Zody, M.C., Eriksson, J., Meadows, J.R.S., Sherwood, E., Webster, M.T., Jiang, L., Ingman, M., Sharpe, T., Ka, S., Hallböök, F., Besnier, F., Carlborg, O., Bed’hom, B., Tixier-Boichard, M., Jensen, P., Siegel, P., Lindblad-Toh, K., Andersson, L.: Whole-genome resequencing reveals loci under selection during chicken domestication. Nature. 464, 587–591 (2010)

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Garrison, D.R., Vaughan, N.D.: Blended Learning in Higher Education. Jossey-Bass, San Francisco, CA, USA (2007)

An edited book

Chowdhry, B.S., Shaikh, F.K., Hussain, D.M.A., Uqaili, M.A. eds: Emerging Trends and Applications in Information Communication Technologies: Second International Multi Topic Conference, IMTIC 2012, Jamshoro, Pakistan, March 28-30, 2012. Proceedings. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg (2012)

A chapter in an edited book

Little, D.: Actor-Centered Sociology and the New Pragmatism. In: Zahle, J. and Collin, F. (eds.) Rethinking the Individualism-Holism Debate: Essays in the Philosophy of Social Science. pp. 55–75. Springer International Publishing, Cham (2014)

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 Computational Optimization and Applications.

Blog post

Hamilton, K.: What Would Happen If The Earth Were Flat?, https://www.iflscience.com/space/what-would-happen-if-earth-was-flat/

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: Opportunities and Constraints for Expanding Use of Research Facilities at the National Bureau of Standards. U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC (1985)

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Packman, T.: The Effects of Eccentricity on Rectangular Hollow Structural Section Stress in Moment Connections Loaded Out-of-Plane, (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

Kelly, O.: The Nation; What the Rosenberg Papers Show The Surprise Final Witness, (1975)

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	Computational Optimization and Applications
Abbreviation	Comput. Optim. Appl.
ISSN (print)	0926-6003
ISSN (online)	1573-2894
Scope	Applied Mathematics Computational Mathematics Control and Optimization