How to format your references using the Journal of the Optical Society of America B citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Journal of the Optical Society of America B. 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

A. H. Zewail, "Four-dimensional electron microscopy," Science 328, 187–193 (2010).

A journal article with 2 authors

M. J. T. Jordan and S. H. Kable, "Chemistry. Roaming reaction pathways along excited states," Science 335, 1054–1055 (2012).

A journal article with 3 authors

N. Yumoto, N. Kim, and S. J. Burden, "Lrp4 is a retrograde signal for presynaptic differentiation at neuromuscular synapses," Nature 489, 438–442 (2012).

A journal article with 4 or more authors

W. Liang, M. P. Shores, M. Bockrath, J. R. Long, and H. Park, "Kondo resonance in a single-molecule transistor," Nature 417, 725–729 (2002).

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

R. Shanmugam and R. Chattamvelli, Statistics for Scientists and Engineers (John Wiley & Sons, Inc, 2015).

An edited book

J. Kawash, ed., Online Social Media Analysis and Visualization, Lecture Notes in Social Networks (Springer International Publishing, 2014).

A chapter in an edited book

E. Kuźniak, "The Ascorbate–Gluathione Cycle and Related Redox Signals in Plant–Pathogen Interactions," in Ascorbate-Glutathione Pathway and Stress Tolerance in Plants, N. A. Anjum, M.-T. Chan, and S. Umar, eds. (Springer Netherlands, 2010), pp. 115–136.

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 the Optical Society of America B.

Blog post

S. Luntz, "Greenland Largely Melted 400,000 Years Ago," https://www.iflscience.com/environment/greenland-largely-melted-400000-years-ago/.

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, Federal Air Marshal Service: Actions Needed to Better Incorporate Risk in Deployment Strategy (U.S. Government Printing Office, 2016).

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

K. A. Slayton, "A psychoeducational support group for families of youth experiencing symptoms of schizophrenia: A grant proposal," Doctoral dissertation, California State University, Long Beach (2013).

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

M. M. Grynbaum, "Fox Trades Motto of ‘Fair and Balanced’ for ‘Most Watched, Most Trusted,’" New York Times (June 14, 2017).

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	Journal of the Optical Society of America B
ISSN (print)	0740-3224
ISSN (online)	1520-8540
Scope