How to format your references using the Optics Communications citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Optics Communications. 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]

B. Konecky, Palaeoclimate: Monsoon matters, Nature 517 (2015) 445–446.

A journal article with 2 authors

[1]

R. Calsbeek, R.M. Cox, Experimentally assessing the relative importance of predation and competition as agents of selection, Nature 465 (2010) 613–616.

A journal article with 3 authors

[1]

I. Charrier, N. Mathevon, P. Jouventin, Mother’s voice recognition by seal pups, Nature 412 (2001) 873.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

[1]

M. Stelmach-Mardas, M. Mardas, W. Warchoł, M. Jamka, J. Walkowiak, Successful maintenance of body weight reduction after individualized dietary counseling in obese subjects, Sci. Rep. 4 (2014) 6620.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

[1]

P. Rowe, Essential Statistics for the Pharmaceutical Sciences, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, Chichester, UK, 2015.

An edited book

[1]

S.R.D. Rocca, ed., Typed Lambda Calculi and Applications: 8th International Conference,TLCA 2007, Paris, France,June 26-28, 2007. Proceedings, Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, 2007.

A chapter in an edited book

[1]

M. Hillairet, Topics in the Mathematical Theory of Interactions of Incompressible Viscous Fluid with Rigid Bodies, in: T. Bodnár, G.P. Galdi, Š. Nečasová (Eds.), Fluid-Structure Interaction and Biomedical Applications, Springer, Basel, 2014: pp. 257–320.

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 Optics Communications.

Blog post

[1]

E. Andrew, What Did Mars Look Like When It Had Water?, IFLScience (2013). https://www.iflscience.com/space/what-did-mars-look-when-it-had-water/ (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, Title I Funding: Poor Children Benefit Though Funding Per Poor Child Differs, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC, 2002.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

[1]

D.L. Lazor, “Festen”: A celebration (of the imagination!), Doctoral dissertation, California State University, Long Beach, 2010.

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]

K. Slivka, First Half of Year Hottest On Record, New York Times (2012) A11.

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	Optics Communications
Abbreviation	Opt. Commun.
ISSN (print)	0030-4018
Scope	Physical and Theoretical Chemistry Electrical and Electronic Engineering Electronic, Optical and Magnetic Materials Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics