How to format your references using the Optical Review citation style

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

Check, E.: Malta provides loophole for breast-cancer screen. Nature. 419, 767 (2002)

A journal article with 2 authors

Reilly, S.M., White, T.D.: Hypaxial motor patterns and the function of epipubic bones in primitive mammals. Science. 299, 400–402 (2003)

A journal article with 3 authors

Moldoveanu, T., Gehring, K., Green, D.R.: Concerted multi-pronged attack by calpastatin to occlude the catalytic cleft of heterodimeric calpains. Nature. 456, 404–408 (2008)

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Castellani, F., van Rossum, B., Diehl, A., Schubert, M., Rehbein, K., Oschkinat, H.: Structure of a protein determined by solid-state magic-angle-spinning NMR spectroscopy. Nature. 420, 98–102 (2002)

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Adámek, J.: Foundations of Coding. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ (1991)

An edited book

Allen, C.: The Essential Guide to Open Source Flash Development. Apress, Berkeley, CA (2008)

A chapter in an edited book

Cowpertwait, P.S.P., Metcalfe, A.V.: Basic Stochastic Models. In: Cowpertwait, P.S.P. (ed.) Introductory Time Series with R. pp. 67–89. Springer, New York, NY (2009)

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 Review.

Blog post

Andrew, E.: Conservationists Plan To Airlift 100 Rhinos To Save Them From Poaching, https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/conservationists-plan-airlift-100-rhinos-save-them-poaching/

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: [Comments on Recommendations in GAO Report]. U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC (1991)

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Byeon, G.: More than words: A comparative study of Liszt’s Liebesträume and the songs from which they were transcribed, (2014)

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

Kelly, M.: THE 1992 CAMPAIGN: The Democrats; CLINTON SAYS BUSH IMPERILS ELDERLY, (1992)

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	Optical Review
Abbreviation	Opt. Rev.
ISSN (print)	1340-6000
ISSN (online)	1349-9432
Scope	Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics