How to format your references using the Optimization and Engineering citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Optimization and 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

Mann A (2011) Cosmology: The hunting of the dark. Nature 471:433–435

A journal article with 2 authors

Huybers P, Wunsch C (2005) Obliquity pacing of the late Pleistocene glacial terminations. Nature 434:491–494

A journal article with 3 authors

Desai BS, Chadha A, Cook B (2014) The stum gene is essential for mechanical sensing in proprioceptive neurons. Science 343:1256–1259

A journal article with 5 or more authors

Greenleaf WJ, Frieda KL, Foster DAN, et al (2008) Direct observation of hierarchical folding in single riboswitch aptamers. Science 319:630–633

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Dexter AL (2012) Monitoring and Control of Information-Poor Systems. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, Chichester, UK

An edited book

Wilson EJ, Hair JF (eds) (2015) Proceedings of the 1996 Academy of Marketing Science (AMS) Annual Conference. Springer International Publishing, Cham

A chapter in an edited book

Kłos M, Waszczyszyn Z (2010) Prediction of Compaction Characteristics of Granular Soils by Neural Networks. In: Diamantaras K, Duch W, Iliadis LS (eds) Artificial Neural Networks – ICANN 2010: 20th International Conference, Thessaloniki, Greece, September 15-18, 2010, Proceedings, Part I. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, pp 42–45

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 Optimization and Engineering.

Blog post

Hale T (2016) Scientist Steps Closer To Understanding The Enigmatic Noises Of The Northern Lights. In: IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/environment/scientist-steps-closer-to-understanding-the-enigmatic-noises-of-the-northern-lights/. Accessed 30 Oct 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 (1998) Charter Schools: Recent Experiences in Accessing Federal Funds. U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Graber ME (2013) Best practices in enhancement deals: Nonprofit and for profit theatrical collaborations. Doctoral dissertation, California State University, Long Beach

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

Crow K (2000) Pool, Gym or a Bit of Both? Neighbors Mull the Options. New York Times 147

In-text citations

References should be cited in the text by name and year in parentheses:

This sentence cites one reference (Mann 2011).
This sentence cites two references (Huybers and Wunsch 2005; Mann 2011).

Here are examples of in-text citations with multiple authors:

Two authors: (Huybers and Wunsch 2005)
Three or more authors: (Greenleaf et al. 2008)

About the journal

Full journal title	Optimization and Engineering
Abbreviation	Optim. Eng.
ISSN (print)	1389-4420
ISSN (online)	1573-2924
Scope	Software Aerospace Engineering Civil and Structural Engineering Electrical and Electronic Engineering Mechanical Engineering Control and Optimization