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

Powell K (2004) The yeast is rising. Nature 429(6988):224–225.

A journal article with 2 authors

Ito T, Okazaki S (2000) Pushing the limits of lithography. Nature 406(6799):1027–1031.

A journal article with 3 authors

Moore SW, Biais N, Sheetz MP (2009) Traction on immobilized netrin-1 is sufficient to reorient axons. Science 325(5937):166.

A journal article with 11 or more authors

Grenon SM, Jeanne M, Aguado-Zuniga J, Conte MS, Hughes-Fulford M (2013) Effects of gravitational mechanical unloading in endothelial cells: association between caveolins, inflammation and adhesion molecules. Sci. Rep. 3:1494.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Holt J (2013) The Ultimate Daily Show and Philosophy (John Wiley & Sons, Oxford).

An edited book

Ganghoffer JF, Pastrone F eds. (2010) Mechanics of Microstructured Solids 2: Cellular Materials, Fibre Reinforced Solids and Soft Tissues (Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg).

A chapter in an edited book

Graf F, te Kamp L, Auer M, Acharya MS, Wu W (2015) Soil Aggregate Stability in Eco-engineering: Comparison of Field and Laboratory Data with an Outlook on a New Modelling Approach. Wu W, ed. Recent Advances in Modeling Landslides and Debris Flows. Springer Series in Geomechanics and Geoengineering. (Springer International Publishing, Cham), 29–47.

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

Luntz S (2015) Gravity May Delay Loss Of Antarctic Ice. IFLScience. Retrieved (October 30, 2018), https://www.iflscience.com/environment/gravity-may-delay-loss-antarctic-ice/.

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 (1991) Computer Technology: Air Attack Warning System Cannot Process All Radar Track Data (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

Ismail AR (2009) Assessing the relationship between the Internet, radio frequency identifier (RFID), and information technology (IT) flexibility: A correlational study and findings. Doctoral dissertation. (Capella University, Minneapolis, MN).

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

Kenigsberg B (2016) The Listings; Film Series. New York Times (December 29).

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Powell 2004).
This sentence cites two references (Ito and Okazaki 2000, Powell 2004).

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

Two authors: (Ito and Okazaki 2000)
Three or more authors: (Grenon et al. 2013)

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

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