How to format your references using the Optical Engineering citation style

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

P. Ball, “Carl Djerassi (1923-2015),” Nature 519(7541), 34 (2015).

A journal article with 2 authors

M. L. Oldham and J. Chen, “Crystal structure of the maltose transporter in a pretranslocation intermediate state,” Science 332(6034), 1202–1205 (2011).

A journal article with 3 authors

H. H. Kieffer, P. R. Christensen, and T. N. Titus, “CO2 jets formed by sublimation beneath translucent slab ice in Mars’ seasonal south polar ice cap,” Nature 442(7104), 793–796 (2006).

A journal article with 4 or more authors

B. J. Hinds et al., “Aligned multiwalled carbon nanotube membranes,” Science 303(5654), 62–65 (2004).

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

R. Bartoszyǹski and M. Niewiadomska-Bugaj, Probability and Statistical Inference, Second Edition, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ (2007).

An edited book

S. Goldstein and J. A. Naglieri, Eds., Encyclopedia of Child Behavior and Development, Springer US, Boston, MA (2011).

A chapter in an edited book

F. Oquendo, J. Leite, and T. Batista, “Specifying Behavior of Software Architectures,” in Software Architecture in Action: Designing and Executing Architectural Models with SysADL Grounded on the OMG SysML Standard, J. Leite and T. Batista, Eds., pp. 65–88, Springer International Publishing, Cham (2016).

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 Optical Engineering.

Blog post

D. Andrew, “9 Weird Psychological Reasons Someone Might Fall In Love With You,” IFLScience, 21 December 2016, <https://www.iflscience.com/editors-blog/9-weird-psychological-reasons-someone-might-fall-in-love-with-you/> (accessed 30 October 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, “Effectiveness and Management of Neighborhood Youth Corps In-School Program at Three Locations,” 089473, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC (1972).

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

R. L. Polk, “Examining students with disabilities in a linked learning pathway,” Doctoral dissertation, California State University, Long Beach (2015).

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

M. Haberman and G. Thrush, “Trump Reaches Beyond West Wing for Counsel,” in New York Times, p. A1 (2017).

In-text citations

References should be cited in the text by sequential numbers in superscript:

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	Optical Engineering
Abbreviation	Opt. Eng.
ISSN (print)	0091-3286
ISSN (online)	1560-2303
Scope	General Engineering Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics