How to format your references using the Optimization Letters citation style

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

Robock, A.: Atmospheric science. Whither geoengineering? Science. 320, 1166–1167 (2008)

A journal article with 2 authors

Michael, P.J., Cheadle, M.J.: Geochemistry. Making a crust. Science. 323, 1017–1018 (2009)

A journal article with 3 authors

Piras, V., Tomita, M., Selvarajoo, K.: Transcriptome-wide variability in single embryonic development cells. Sci. Rep. 4, 7137 (2014)

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Zhang, P., Yaji, K., Hashimoto, T., Ota, Y., Kondo, T., Okazaki, K., Wang, Z., Wen, J., Gu, G.D., Ding, H., Shin, S.: Observation of topological superconductivity on the surface of an iron-based superconductor. Science. 360, 182–186 (2018)

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Taylor, C.J., Young, P.C., Chotai, A.: True Digital Control. John Wiley & Sons Ltd, Chichester, UK (2013)

An edited book

Fricker, G., Ott, M., Mahringer, A. eds: The Blood Brain Barrier (BBB). Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg (2014)

A chapter in an edited book

Chung, S.K., Chung, S.S.M.: Transgenic and Gene Knockout Analysis of Diabetic Neuropathy. In: Veves, A. and Malik, R.A. (eds.) Diabetic Neuropathy: Clinical Management. pp. 51–67. Humana Press, Totowa, NJ (2007)

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 Letters.

Blog post

Andrews, R.: The Paris Agreement Will Come Into Force On November 4

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: Federal Autism Activities: Agencies Are Encouraging Early Identification and Providing Services, and Recent Actions Could Improve Coordination. U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC (2016)

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Anderson, A.: Scribblins, (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

Cooper, M.: The Met Offers Buyouts To 21 of Its Employees, (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	Optimization Letters
Abbreviation	Optim. Lett.
ISSN (print)	1862-4472
ISSN (online)	1862-4480
Scope	Control and Optimization