How to format your references using the Optics Express citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Optics Express. 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 reference managers.
BibTeX	BibTeX styles 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

H. Ko, "Neuroscience. Functional organization of synaptic connections in the neocortex," Science 346(6209), 555 (2014).

A journal article with 2 authors

L. Lum and H. Clevers, "Cell biology. The unusual case of Porcupine," Science 337(6097), 922–923 (2012).

A journal article with 3 authors

J. W. Nadler, D. E. Angelaki, and G. C. DeAngelis, "A neural representation of depth from motion parallax in macaque visual cortex," Nature 452(7187), 642–645 (2008).

A journal article with 4 or more authors

D. Wang, H. Tian, Y. Yang, D. Xie, T.-L. Ren, and Y. Zhang, "Scalable and direct growth of graphene micro ribbons on dielectric substrates," Sci. Rep. 3, 1348 (2013).

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

D. Prydie and I. Hewitt, Practical Physiotherapy for Small Animal Practice (John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, 2015).

An edited book

I. Biza, Research on Teaching and Learning Mathematics at the Tertiary Level: State-of-the-Art and Looking Ahead, ICME-13 Topical Surveys (Springer International Publishing, 2016).

A chapter in an edited book

A. Macrander, "Spatial (In)Justice," in Diversity and Excellence in Higher Education: Can the Challenges Be Reconciled?, R. M. O. Pritchard, M. Klumpp, and U. Teichler, eds. (SensePublishers, 2015), pp. 71–90.

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 Express.

Blog post

E. Andrew, "A Lab In South Korea Will Clone Your Dog For $100,000," https://www.iflscience.com/technology/lab-south-korea-will-clone-your-dog-100000/.

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, Tank Recovery Vehicle: Status of Program Acquisition and Full-Scale Engineering Development (U.S. Government Printing Office, 1989).

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

W. He, "A Comprehensive Analysis of Fracture Initiation and Propagation in Sandstones based on Micro-Level Observation and Digital Imaging Correlation," Doctoral dissertation, University of Louisiana (2017).

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

J. Barron, "Long-Ago Brooklyn Brewer Left Hidden Underground Vaults, and Mystery," New York Times (February 2, 2017).

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 Express
ISSN (online)	1094-4087
Scope