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:

PaperpileThe citation style is built in and you can choose it in Settings > Citation Style or Paperpile > Citation Style in Google Docs.
EndNoteDownload the output style file
Mendeley, Zotero, Papers, and othersThe style is either built in or you can download a CSL file that is supported by most references management programs.
BibTeXBibTeX 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
Hertwig, R., 2012. Psychology. Tapping into the wisdom of the crowd--with confidence. Science 336, 303–304.
A journal article with 2 authors
Sergeev, A.G., Hartwig, J.F., 2011. Selective, nickel-catalyzed hydrogenolysis of aryl ethers. Science 332, 439–443.
A journal article with 3 authors
Evaristo, J., Jasechko, S., McDonnell, J.J., 2015. Global separation of plant transpiration from groundwater and streamflow. Nature 525, 91–94.
A journal article with 4 or more authors
Chong, S., Dugast-Darzacq, C., Liu, Z., Dong, P., Dailey, G.M., Cattoglio, C., Heckert, A., Banala, S., Lavis, L., Darzacq, X., Tjian, R., 2018. Imaging dynamic and selective low-complexity domain interactions that control gene transcription. Science 361.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book
Reiss, E., Shadomy, H.J., Lyon, G.M., III, 2011. Fundamental Medical Mycology. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ.
An edited book
Shtub, A., 2010. ERP: The Dynamics of Supply Chain and Process Management. Springer US, Boston, MA.
A chapter in an edited book
Barnes, A.J., 2016. Childhood Stress and Resilience, in: Korin, M.R. (Ed.), Health Promotion for Children and Adolescents, Blueprints for Violence Prevention Series. Springer US, Boston, MA, pp. 85–98.

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., 2016. Charon’s Cracks Formed During Ancient Near-Misses With Other Worlds [WWW Document]. IFLScience. URL https://www.iflscience.com/space/charons-cracks-formed-during-ancient-near-misses-other-worlds/ (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, 2006. Telecommunications: Challenges to Assessing and Improving Telecommunications For Native Americans on Tribal Lands (No. GAO-06-189). 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
Herman, G.S., 2013. Terahertz local oscillator via difference frequency generation in iii-v semiconductors using frequency stabilized lasers (Doctoral dissertation). University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ.

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, C., 2014. Texas Noir, by Directors Who Aren’t From Texas. New York Times A25B.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Hertwig, 2012).
This sentence cites two references (Hertwig, 2012; Sergeev and Hartwig, 2011).

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

  • Two authors: (Sergeev and Hartwig, 2011)
  • Three or more authors: (Chong et al., 2018)

About the journal

Full journal titleComputers and Operations Research
AbbreviationComput. Oper. Res.
ISSN (print)0305-0548
ScopeGeneral Computer Science
Management Science and Operations Research
Modelling and Simulation

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