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

Bohannon J (2015) Scientific societies. Torture report prompts APA apology. Science 349:221–222

A journal article with 2 authors

Reches Z, Lockner DA (2010) Fault weakening and earthquake instability by powder lubrication. Nature 467:452–455

A journal article with 3 authors

Shih WM, Quispe JD, Joyce GF (2004) A 1.7-kilobase single-stranded DNA that folds into a nanoscale octahedron. Nature 427:618–621

A journal article with 5 or more authors

Chen J-B, Gao H-W, Zhang Y-L, et al (2014) Developmental toxicity of diclofenac and elucidation of gene regulation in zebrafish (Danio rerio). Sci Rep 4:4841

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Alexandridis AK, Zapranis AD (2014) Wavelet Neural Networks. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ

An edited book

El Fallah Seghrouchni A, Dix J, Dastani M, Bordini RH (eds) (2009) Multi-Agent Programming: Languages, Tools and Applications. Springer US, Boston, MA

A chapter in an edited book

Heendaliya L, Lin D, Hurson A (2012) Predictive Line Queries for Traffic Prediction. In: Hameurlain A, Küng J, Wagner R, et al. (eds) Transactions on Large-Scale Data- and Knowledge-Centered Systems VI: Special Issue on Database- and Expert-Systems Applications. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, pp 106–133

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 (2015) How Much Sex Should You Have If You Want To Get Pregnant? In: IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/more-sex-gets-you-pregnant/. 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 (2014) Export Controls: NASA Management Action and Improved Oversight Needed to Reduce the Risk of Unauthorized Access to Its Technologies. 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

Bryant JD (2014) The Investigation of Self-Determination in Students Participating in Higher Education with an Invisible Disability. Doctoral dissertation, Lindenwood 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

Kelly M (1992) For Perot, a Time of Need. New York Times A1

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Bohannon 2015).
This sentence cites two references (Reches and Lockner 2010; Bohannon 2015).

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

Two authors: (Reches and Lockner 2010)
Three or more authors: (Chen et al. 2014)

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

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