How to format your references using the Computers and Operations Research citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Computers and Operations Research. 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	Download the output style file
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

Hampp, N., 2002. Analytical chemistry. Analytes ante portas. Science 298, 1561–1562.

A journal article with 2 authors

Behar, S.M., Baehrecke, E.H., 2015. Tuberculosis: Autophagy is not the answer. Nature 528, 482–483.

A journal article with 3 authors

Hnasko, T.S., Sotak, B.N., Palmiter, R.D., 2005. Morphine reward in dopamine-deficient mice. Nature 438, 854–857.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Asters, M.C., Williams, W.P., Perkins, A.D., Mylroie, J.E., Windham, G.L., Shan, X., 2014. Relating significance and relations of differentially expressed genes in response to Aspergillus flavus infection in maize. Sci. Rep. 4, 4815.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Binnie, C., 2016. Linux Server Security. John Wiley & Sons, Inc, Indianapolis, IN, USA.

An edited book

Preedy, V.R., Srirajaskanthan, R., Patel, V.B. (Eds.), 2013. Handbook of Food Fortification and Health: From Concepts to Public Health Applications Volume 2, Nutrition and Health. Springer, New York, NY.

A chapter in an edited book

Bindewald, J.M., Peterson, G.L., Miller, M.E., 2015. Trajectory Generation with Player Modeling, in: Barbosa, D., Milios, E. (Eds.), Advances in Artificial Intelligence: 28th Canadian Conference on Artificial Intelligence, Canadian AI 2015, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, June 2-5, 2015, Proceedings, Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Springer International Publishing, Cham, pp. 42–49.

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 Computers and Operations Research.

Blog post

Andrews, R., 2017. Escaped Guatemalan Scorpion Leaps Out Of Bag On British Train [WWW Document]. IFLScience. URL https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/escaped-guatemalan-scorpion-leaps-out-bag-british-train/ (accessed 10.30.18).

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, 2014. Healthcare.gov: Ineffective Planning and Oversight Practices Underscore the Need for Improved Contract Management (No. GAO-14-694). 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

Sampson, R., 2010. The effects of foster care on children: A comparison of 18th century through modern day foster care practices (Doctoral dissertation). California State University, Long Beach, Long Beach, CA.

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

Greenhouse, L., 2007. Case Touches a 2nd Amendment Nerve. New York Times A20.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Hampp, 2002).
This sentence cites two references (Behar and Baehrecke, 2015; Hampp, 2002).

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

Two authors: (Behar and Baehrecke, 2015)
Three or more authors: (Asters et al., 2014)

About the journal

Full journal title	Computers and Operations Research
Abbreviation	Comput. Oper. Res.
ISSN (print)	0305-0548
Scope	General Computer Science Management Science and Operations Research Modelling and Simulation