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]

M. Grayson, Malaria, Nature 484 (2012) S13.

A journal article with 2 authors

[1]

P. Papasaikas, J. Valcárcel, Evolution. Splicing in 4D, Science 338 (2012) 1547–1548.

A journal article with 3 authors

[1]

Q. Sun, K.F. Haynes, X. Zhou, Differential undertaking response of a lower termite to congeneric and conspecific corpses, Sci. Rep. 3 (2013) 1650.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

[1]

T. Ma, M.-J. Zhao, Y.-K. Wang, S.-M. Fei, Non-commutativity and local indistinguishability of quantum states, Sci. Rep. 4 (2014) 6336.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

[1]

H. Yang, E.K. Lee, Healthcare Analytics: From Data to Knowledge to Healthcare Improvement, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey, 2016.

An edited book

[1]

Y. Alber, Nonlinear Ill-posed Problems of Monotone Type, Springer Netherlands, Dordrecht, 2006.

A chapter in an edited book

[1]

L. Szathmary, P. Valtchev, A. Napoli, Finding Minimal Rare Itemsets and Rare Association Rules, in: Y. Bi, M.-A. Williams (Eds.), Knowledge Science, Engineering and Management: 4th International Conference, KSEM 2010, Belfast, Northern Ireland, UK, September 1-3, 2010. Proceedings, Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, 2010: pp. 16–27.

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, A Melting Arctic Demands More – Not Less – Research On Earth Science, IFLScience (2015). https://www.iflscience.com/environment/melting-arctic-demands-more-not-less-research-earth-science/ (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, Aviation Safety: Users Differ in Views of Collision Avoidance System and Cite Problems, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC, 1992.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

[1]

E.W. Ayer, An N-gram enhanced learning classifier for Chinese character recognition, Doctoral dissertation, California State University, Long Beach, 2013.

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]

S. Craig, D.W. Chen, Trump in New York: Deep Roots, but Little Sway, New York Times (2016) A1.

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