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

Kerr RA (2000) PLANETARY SCIENCE: Saturn Wins Satellite Title With New Moons. Science 290:689a

A journal article with 2 authors

Whitesides GM, Grzybowski B (2002) Self-assembly at all scales. Science 295:2418–2421

A journal article with 3 authors

Alford RA, Bradfield KS, Richards SJ (2007) Ecology: global warming and amphibian losses. Nature 447:E3-4; discussion E5-6

A journal article with 5 or more authors

Pfeifer MA, Williams GJ, Vartanyants IA, et al (2006) Three-dimensional mapping of a deformation field inside a nanocrystal. Nature 442:63–66

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Pollak P (2011) Fine Chemicals. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ

An edited book

Gupta VP (2015) The Functional Analysis of Quantum Information Theory: A Collection of Notes Based on Lectures by Gilles Pisier, K. R. Parthasarathy, Vern Paulsen and Andreas Winter. Springer International Publishing, Cham

A chapter in an edited book

Papadimitriou CH (2007) The Computation of Equilibria. In: Deng X, Graham FC (eds) Internet and Network Economics: Third International Workshop, WINE 2007, San Diego, CA, USA, December 12-14, 2007. Proceedings. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, pp 5–6

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) Giant Slugs Are Breaking Into Bird Nests And Eating The Chicks. In: IFLScience. 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 (1989) Observations on Management of Department of Education’s Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services. 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

Sanchez-Mejia ZM (2013) Monsoon dependent ecosystems: Implications of the vertical distribution of soil moisture on land surface-atmosphere interactions. Doctoral dissertation, University of Arizona

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

Walsh MW (2014) Detroit in Deal With Its Biggest Holdout Creditor. New York Times A20

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Kerr 2000).
This sentence cites two references (Kerr 2000; Whitesides and Grzybowski 2002).

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

Two authors: (Whitesides and Grzybowski 2002)
Three or more authors: (Pfeifer et al. 2006)

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