How to format your references using the Operations Research Letters citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Operations Research Letters. 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	Download the output style file
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

[1]

D. Helbing, Globally networked risks and how to respond, Nature 497 (2013) 51–59.

A journal article with 2 authors

[1]

E. Ranta, V. Kaitala, Comment on “Stability via asynchrony in Drosophila metapopulations with low migration rates,” Science 314 (2006) 420; author reply 420.

A journal article with 3 authors

[1]

J.H. Schön, H. Meng, Z. Bao, Self-assembled monolayer organic field-effect transistors, Nature 413 (2001) 713–716.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

[1]

M. Campillos, M. Kuhn, A.-C. Gavin, L.J. Jensen, P. Bork, Drug target identification using side-effect similarity, Science 321 (2008) 263–266.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

[1]

M.H. Gerardi, Settleability Problems and Loss of Solids in the Activated Sludge Process, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ, 2003.

An edited book

[1]

E. Callus, E. Quadri, eds., Clinical Psychology and Congenital Heart Disease: Lifelong Psychological Aspects and Interventions, Springer, Milano, 2015.

A chapter in an edited book

[1]

Ö. Arslan-Ayaydin, J. Thewissen, The Impact of Environmental Strengths and Concerns on the Accounting Performance of Firms in the Energy Sector, in: A. Dorsman, W. Westerman, J.L. Simpson (Eds.), Energy Technology and Valuation Issues, Springer International Publishing, Cham, 2015: pp. 83–107.

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 Letters.

Blog post

[1]

D. Andrew, Will AI Ever Understand Human Emotions?, IFLScience (2017). https://www.iflscience.com/technology/will-ai-ever-understand-human-emotions/ (accessed October 30, 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

[1]

Government Accountability Office, [Comments on DOD Data Center Consolidation Plan], U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC, 1994.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

[1]

N.M. Messian, The Spiral of Time: A Path to the Soul—Jewish Mystical and Depth Psychological Perspectives, Doctoral dissertation, Pacifica Graduate Institute, 2012.

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

[1]

G. Kalogerakis, A Life in Pictures, New York Times (2012) MM50.

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	Operations Research Letters
Abbreviation	Oper. Res. Lett.
ISSN (print)	0167-6377
Scope	Software Management Science and Operations Research Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering Applied Mathematics