How to format your references using the Optimization citation style

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

Pandit MK. The Himalayas must be protected. Nature. 2013;501(7467):283.

A journal article with 2 authors

[1]

Binder GK, Griffin DE. Interferon-gamma-mediated site-specific clearance of alphavirus from CNS neurons. Science. 2001;293(5528):303–306.

A journal article with 3 authors

[1]

Mallatt J, Chen J, Holland ND. Comment on “A new species of yunnanozoan with implications for deuterostome evolution.” Science. 2003;300(5624):1372; author reply 1372.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

[1]

Lin Y-M, Valdes-Garcia A, Han S-J, et al. Wafer-scale graphene integrated circuit. Science. 2011;332(6035):1294–1297.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

[1]

Olsson A. Understanding Changing Telecommunications. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd; 2005.

An edited book

[1]

El Oualkadi A, Choubani F, El Moussati A, editors. Proceedings of the Mediterranean Conference on Information & Communication Technologies 2015: MedCT 2015 Volume 2. Cham: Springer International Publishing; 2016.

A chapter in an edited book

[1]

Grothues TM. A Review of Acoustic Telemetry Technology and a Perspective on its Diversification Relative to Coastal Tracking Arrays. In: Nielsen JL, Arrizabalaga H, Fragoso N, et al., editors. Tagging and Tracking of Marine Animals with Electronic Devices. Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands; 2009. p. 77–90.

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 Optimization.

Blog post

[1]

Andrew D. Infecting Mosquitoes With Bacteria So They Can’t Infect Us With Viruses Like Zika And Dengue [Internet]. IFLScience. IFLScience; 2017 [cited 2018 Oct 30]. Available from: https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/infecting-mosquitoes-with-bacteria-so-they-cant-infect-us-with-viruses-like-zika-and-dengue/.

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. Bureau of Indian Affairs Not Operating Boarding Schools Efficiently. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 1978. Report No.: CED-78-56. .

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

[1]

Uthe PB. The development of polycationic materials for gene delivery applications [Doctoral dissertation]. [Chapel Hill, NC]: University of North Carolina; 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]

Wagner J. Backman Will Not Return as Mets’ Class AAA Manager. New York Times. 2016 Sep 13;B11.

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	Optimization
Abbreviation	Optimization
ISSN (print)	0233-1934
ISSN (online)	1029-4945
Scope	Management Science and Operations Research Applied Mathematics Control and Optimization