How to format your references using the OR Spectrum citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for OR Spectrum. 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:

PaperpileThe citation style is built in and you can choose it in Settings > Citation Style or Paperpile > Citation Style in Google Docs.
EndNoteFind the style here: output styles overview
Mendeley, Zotero, Papers, and othersThe style is either built in or you can download a CSL file that is supported by most references management programs.
BibTeXBibTeX 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
Buckingham S (2004) Buying into the knowledge game. Nature 428:775
A journal article with 2 authors
Robinson CM, Pfeiffer JK (2014) Virology. Leaping the norovirus hurdle. Science 346:700–701
A journal article with 3 authors
Rudolph ML, Lekić V, Lithgow-Bertelloni C (2015) Viscosity jump in Earth’s mid-mantle. Science 350:1349–1352
A journal article with 5 or more authors
Liu W, Christenson SD, Standage S, Shen B (2002) Biosynthesis of the enediyne antitumor antibiotic C-1027. Science 297:1170–1173

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book
Saghyan AS, Langer P (2016) Asymmetric Synthesis of Non&;#x02010;Proteinogenic Amino Acids. Wiley&;#x02010;VCH Verlag GmbH &;#38; Co. KGaA, Weinheim, Germany
An edited book
Shalaby M, Moghadam VM (eds) (2016) Empowering Women after the Arab Spring. Palgrave Macmillan US, New York, NY
A chapter in an edited book
Hecht M, Harting J (2008) Structural Transitions in Colloidal Suspensions. In: Nagel WE, Kröner D, Resch M (eds) High Performance Computing in Science and Engineering `07: Transactions of the High Performance Computing Center, Stuttgart (HLRS) 2007. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, pp 45–65

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 OR Spectrum.

Blog post
Hale T (2017) Where Is The Happiest Place In The US? 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 (1991) Vulnerabilities in the Stafford Student Loan Program. 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
Bentley KJ (2016) Modern Public Market to Revitalize a Small Community. Doctoral dissertation, George Washington University

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
Greenhouse L (2006) After 30 Years, Supreme Court History Project Turns a Final Page. New York Times A15

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Buckingham 2004).
This sentence cites two references (Buckingham 2004; Robinson and Pfeiffer 2014).

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

  • Two authors: (Robinson and Pfeiffer 2014)
  • Three or more authors: (Liu et al. 2002)

About the journal

Full journal titleOR Spectrum
AbbreviationOR Spectr.
ISSN (print)0171-6468
ISSN (online)1436-6304
ScopeManagement Science and Operations Research

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