How to format your references using the Constraints citation style

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

Gauntlett, J. (2000). Physics. Brane new worlds. Nature, 404(6773), 28–29.

A journal article with 2 authors

Wray, G. A., & Babbitt, C. C. (2008). Genetics. Enhancing gene regulation. Science (New York, N.Y.), 321(5894), 1300–1301.

A journal article with 3 authors

Wall, D. H., Nielsen, U. N., & Six, J. (2015). Soil biodiversity and human health. Nature, 528(7580), 69–76.

A journal article with 8 or more authors

Yue, Q., Xiong, S., Cai, D., Wu, Z., & Zhang, X. (2014). Facile and quantitative electrochemical detection of yeast cell apoptosis. Scientific reports, 4, 4373.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Jiang, J., & Zhang, C. (2015). Fundamentals and Applications of Lithium-ion Batteries in Electric Drive Vehicles. Singapore: John Wiley & Sons Singapore Pte. Ltd.

An edited book

Gruhn, V., & Oquendo, F. (Eds.). (2006). Software Architecture: Third European Workshop, EWSA 2006, Nantes, France, September 4-5, 2006, Revised Selected Papers (Vol. 4344). Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer.

A chapter in an edited book

Duffuaa, S. O., & Haroun, A. E. (2009). Maintenance Control. In M. Ben-Daya, S. O. Duffuaa, A. Raouf, J. Knezevic, & D. Ait-Kadi (Eds.), Handbook of Maintenance Management and Engineering (pp. 93–113). London: Springer.

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 Constraints.

Blog post

Andrew, E. (2015, October 30). Hepatitis C: Behind New Wonder Drugs Lies A Terrible Dilemma. IFLScience. IFLScience. Retrieved October 30, 2018, from https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/hepatitis-c-behind-new-wonder-drugs-lies-terrible-dilemma/

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. (2004). Survey of Supervisors at U.S. Attorneys’ Offices, an E-supplement to GAO-04-422 (No. GAO-04-616SP). Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Seesengood, B. N. (2014). Analysis of the Repairability of Resin Modified Glass Ionomer Cement (Doctoral dissertation). Southern Illinois University, Edwardsville, IL.

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

Cumming-Bruce, N., & Sengupta, S. (2017, June 19). In Greece, China Finds a New Ally Against Criticism of Its Human Rights Record. New York Times, p. A4.

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	Constraints
Abbreviation	Constraints
ISSN (print)	1383-7133
ISSN (online)	1572-9354
Scope	Artificial Intelligence Computational Theory and Mathematics Software Discrete Mathematics and Combinatorics