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

Strunk C (2004) Applied physics. Boosting magnetoresistance in molecular devices. Science 306:63–64

A journal article with 2 authors

Zimmerman AW, Connors SL (2014) Neuroscience. Could autism be treated prenatally? Science 343:620–621

A journal article with 3 authors

Martin WF, Sousa FL, Lane N (2014) Evolution. Energy at life’s origin. Science 344:1092–1093

A journal article with 5 or more authors

Zhang D, Yang J, Bao S, et al (2013) Semiconductor nanoparticle-based hydrogels prepared via self-initiated polymerization under sunlight, even visible light. Sci Rep 3:1399

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Daïan J-F (2014) Equilibrium and Transfer in Porous Media 1. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, Chichester, UK

An edited book

Gulizia MM (ed) (2005) Emerging Pathologies in Cardiology: Proceedings of the Mediterranean Cardiology Meeting (Taormina, April 7–9, 2005). Springer, Milano

A chapter in an edited book

Roco MC, Bainbridge WS (2007) Ethics and Law. In: Roco MC, Bainbridge WS (eds) Nanotechnology: Societal Implications: Individual Perspectives. Springer Netherlands, Dordrecht, pp 169–205

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

Andrew E (2015) Six Amazing Sights That Look Even Better From The International Space Station. 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 (1973) Evaluation of the Office of Economic Opportunity’s Performance Contracting Experiment. 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

Koester A (2017) It All Started on a Lake. Doctoral dissertation, Southern Illinois University

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

Stack L, Schweber N (2015) 2 Shot by Undercover New York City Officer in Westchester. New York Times A14

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Strunk 2004).
This sentence cites two references (Strunk 2004; Zimmerman and Connors 2014).

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

Two authors: (Zimmerman and Connors 2014)
Three or more authors: (Zhang 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