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

Broecker WS (2003) Does the trigger for abrupt climate change reside in the ocean or in the atmosphere? Science 300:1519–1522

A journal article with 2 authors

Cheng G, Zheng S-Y (2014) Construction of a high-performance magnetic enzyme nanosystem for rapid tryptic digestion. Sci Rep 4:6947

A journal article with 3 authors

Pompilio L, Kacelnik A, Behmer ST (2006) State-dependent learned valuation drives choice in an invertebrate. Science 311:1613–1615

A journal article with 5 or more authors

Maga G, Villani G, Crespan E, et al (2007) 8-oxo-guanine bypass by human DNA polymerases in the presence of auxiliary proteins. Nature 447:606–608

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Chu L-Y, Wang W (2017) Microfluidics for Advanced Functional Polymeric Materials. Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim, Germany

An edited book

Breidlid A, Cheyeka AM, Farag AI (eds) (2015) Perspectives on Youth, HIV/AIDS and Indigenous Knowledges. SensePublishers, Rotterdam

A chapter in an edited book

North D, Zewotir T (2014) Transforming Statistics Education in South Africa. In: MacGillivray H, Phillips B, Martin MA (eds) Topics from Australian Conferences on Teaching Statistics: OZCOTS 2008-2012. Springer, New York, NY, pp 43–57

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 E (2015) Five Synthetic Materials With The Power To Change The World. In: IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/chemistry/five-synthetic-materials-power-change-world/. 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 (2002) Telecommunications: Additional Federal Efforts Could Help Advance Digital Television Transition. 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

Goldstein DL (2010) Integration of geospatial technologies into K–12 curriculum: An investigation of teacher and student perceptions and student academic achievement. Doctoral dissertation, Florida Atlantic 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

Bosman J, Harmon A (2017) Love of Music Drew Victims To a Fatal Trap. 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 (Broecker 2003).
This sentence cites two references (Broecker 2003; Cheng and Zheng 2014).

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

Two authors: (Cheng and Zheng 2014)
Three or more authors: (Maga et al. 2007)

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