How to format your references using the Journal of Combinatorial Optimization citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Journal of Combinatorial Optimization. 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

Reynolds CR (2005) The evolution of sensibility. Nature 434:316–319

A journal article with 2 authors

Schubert EF, Kim JK (2005) Solid-state light sources getting smart. Science 308:1274–1278

A journal article with 3 authors

Aldaye FA, Palmer AL, Sleiman HF (2008) Assembling materials with DNA as the guide. Science 321:1795–1799

A journal article with 5 or more authors

Choi J-H, Li Z, Cui P, et al (2013) Drastic reduction in the growth temperature of graphene on copper via enhanced London dispersion force. Sci Rep 3:1925

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Peat J, Elliott E, Baur L, Keena V (2002) Scientific Writing Easy when you know how. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., London, WC

An edited book

Tadros T (ed) (2013) Encyclopedia of Colloid and Interface Science. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

A chapter in an edited book

Halmenschlager CM, de Andrade MJ, Tarragó DP, de Fraga Malfatti C (2011) Nanostructured Materials for Energy Applications. In: Bergmann CP, Andrade MJ de (eds) Nanostructured Materials for Engineering Applications. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, pp 57–73

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 Journal of Combinatorial Optimization.

Blog post

Luntz S (2014) New Evidence Plants Can “Think” And Make Decisions Based On Possible Future Risks. In: IFLScience. Accessed 30 Oct 2018

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 (1970) Claim for Reimbursement for State Taxes. 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

Garcia M (2015) College preparedness program for high school students in South Los Angeles, California: A grant proposal. Doctoral dissertation, California State University, Long Beach

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

Vecsey G (2010) Fans Voice Frustration, But Mets Leave It Behind. New York Times B15

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Reynolds 2005).
This sentence cites two references (Reynolds 2005; Schubert and Kim 2005).

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

Two authors: (Schubert and Kim 2005)
Three or more authors: (Choi et al. 2013)

About the journal

Full journal title	Journal of Combinatorial Optimization
Abbreviation	J. Comb. Optim.
ISSN (print)	1382-6905
ISSN (online)	1573-2886
Scope	Computational Theory and Mathematics Computer Science Applications Applied Mathematics Control and Optimization Discrete Mathematics and Combinatorics