How to format your references using the Operational Research citation style

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

Pfennig KS (2007) Facultative mate choice drives adaptive hybridization. Science 318:965–967

A journal article with 2 authors

Sabel T, Zschocher M (2013) Transition of refractive index contrast in course of grating growth. Sci Rep 3:2552

A journal article with 3 authors

De’ath G, Lough JM, Fabricius KE (2009) Declining coral calcification on the Great Barrier Reef. Science 323:116–119

A journal article with 5 or more authors

Freedman B, Bartal G, Segev M, et al (2006) Wave and defect dynamics in nonlinear photonic quasicrystals. Nature 440:1166–1169

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Cooper JD (2016) Soil Water Measurement. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, Chichester, UK

An edited book

Arnoldner C (2015) Manual of Otologic Surgery. Springer, Vienna

A chapter in an edited book

Deleris LA, Erhun F (2011) Quantitative Risk Assessment in Supply Chains: A Case Study Based on Engineering Risk Analysis Concepts. In: Kempf KG, Keskinocak P, Uzsoy R (eds) Planning Production and Inventories in the Extended Enterprise: A State-of-the-Art Handbook, Volume 2. Springer, New York, NY, pp 105–131

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 Operational Research.

Blog post

Andrew D (2016) Restricting Gay Men From Donating Blood Is Discriminatory. In: IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/restricting-gay-men-from-donating-blood-is-discriminatory/. 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 (1979) Department of Health, Education, and Welfare Standards of Employee Conduct Need Improvement. 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

Revzin NT (2010) From selling rags to wearing riches: German Jews’ economic progress in the first half of the nineteenth century. Doctoral dissertation, University of Maryland, College Park

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

Whiteside K (2017) Refusing to Let the Seizures Defeat Him. New York Times B8

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Pfennig 2007).
This sentence cites two references (Pfennig 2007; Sabel and Zschocher 2013).

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

Two authors: (Sabel and Zschocher 2013)
Three or more authors: (Freedman et al. 2006)

About the journal

Full journal title	Operational Research
ISSN (print)	1109-2858
ISSN (online)	1866-1505
Scope	Management of Technology and Innovation Strategy and Management Computational Theory and Mathematics Management Science and Operations Research Statistics, Probability and Uncertainty Modelling and Simulation Numerical Analysis