How to format your references using the Operations Research citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Operations 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

Germain RN (2015) William E. Paul (1936-2015). Nature 526(7573):324.

A journal article with 2 authors

Ben-Jacob E, Levine H (2001) The artistry of nature. Nature 409(6823):985–986.

A journal article with 3 authors

Kwak K, Cho K, Kim S (2013) Stable bending performance of flexible organic light-emitting diodes using IZO anodes. Sci. Rep. 3:2787.

A journal article with 11 or more authors

Zuwei X, Ning Z, Yu S, Kunlan L (2001) Reaction-controlled phase-transfer catalysis for propylene epoxidation to propylene oxide. Science 292(5519):1139–1141.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

CCPS (2006) Safe Design and Operation of Process Vents and Emission Control Systems (John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ).

An edited book

Piccioli A (2015) Bones: Orthopaedic Pathologies in Roman Imperial Age 1st ed. 2015. Gazzaniga V, Catalano P, eds. (Springer International Publishing, Cham).

A chapter in an edited book

Wetzlmaier T, Ramler R (2015) Improving Manual Change Impact Analysis with Tool Support: A Study in an Industrial Project. Winkler D, Biffl S, Bergsmann J, eds. Software Quality. Software and Systems Quality in Distributed and Mobile Environments: 7th International Conference, SWQD 2015, Vienna, Austria, January 20-23, 2015, Proceedings. Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing. (Springer International Publishing, Cham), 47–66.

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 Operations Research.

Blog post

Andrew D (2017) Life On Earth Is Used To Gravity – So What Happens To Our Cells And Tissues In Space? IFLScience. Retrieved (October 30, 2018), https://www.iflscience.com/space/life-on-earth-is-used-to-gravity-so-what-happens-to-our-cells-and-tissues-in-space/.

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) Aviation Workforce: Current and Future Availability of Airline Pilots (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

Boylan SA (2017) An exploratory case study: U. S. Army’s leadership development for organizational leaders. Doctoral dissertation. (University of Phoenix, Phoenix, AZ).

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

Kenney M (2013) Lonely in the L.P.G.A. New York Times (August 9).

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Germain 2015).
This sentence cites two references (Ben-Jacob and Levine 2001, Germain 2015).

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

Two authors: (Ben-Jacob and Levine 2001)
Three or more authors: (Zuwei et al. 2001)

About the journal

Full journal title	Operations Research
Abbreviation	Oper. Res.
ISSN (print)	0030-364X
ISSN (online)	1526-5463
Scope	Computer Science Applications Management Science and Operations Research