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:

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

Shlesinger MF (2000) Statistical mechanics. Exploring phase space. Nature 405:135, 137

A journal article with 2 authors

Richerson PJ, Boyd R (2008) Migration: an engine for social change. Nature 456:877

A journal article with 3 authors

Sasaki T, Yamamoto Y, Koashi M (2014) Practical quantum key distribution protocol without monitoring signal disturbance. Nature 509:475–478

A journal article with 5 or more authors

Wertz IE, Kusam S, Lam C, et al (2011) Sensitivity to antitubulin chemotherapeutics is regulated by MCL1 and FBW7. Nature 471:110–114

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

O’Connor K, Aardema F, Pélissier M-C (2006) Beyond Reasonable Doubt. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, Chichester, UK

An edited book

Srivastava S (2010) Novel Biomaterials: Decontamination of Toxic Metals from Wastewater. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

A chapter in an edited book

Shaikh SH, Saeed K, Chaki N (2014) Databases for Research. In: Saeed K, Chaki N (eds) Moving Object Detection Using Background Subtraction. Springer International Publishing, Cham, pp 49–65

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

Taub B (2016) Genetic Link Between Mental Illness And Drug Abuse Uncovered. 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 (1977) Improved Reporting Needed on National Aeronautics and Space Administration Projects. 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

Olson CR (2017) Population genetic structure of two abyssal grenadiers of the north Atlantic and northeastern Pacific oceans. 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

Southall A, White R (2014) Gunman Fires at Moving S.U.V. in Queens, Killing One and Wounding Three Others. New York Times A17

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Shlesinger 2000).
This sentence cites two references (Shlesinger 2000; Richerson and Boyd 2008).

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

Two authors: (Richerson and Boyd 2008)
Three or more authors: (Wertz et al. 2011)

About the journal

Full journal title	OR Spectrum
Abbreviation	OR Spectr.
ISSN (print)	0171-6468
ISSN (online)	1436-6304
Scope	Management Science and Operations Research