How to format your references using the Computers and Operations Research citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Computers and Operations Research. 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 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

McCarty, M., 2003. Discovering genes are made of DNA. Nature 421, 406.

A journal article with 2 authors

Pujolle-Robic, C., Noirez, L., 2001. Observation of shear-induced nematic-isotropic transition in side-chain liquid crystal polymers. Nature 409, 167–171.

A journal article with 3 authors

Monteggia, L.M., Malenka, R.C., Deisseroth, K., 2014. Depression: the best way forward. Nature 515, 200–201.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Li, J.F., Huang, Y.F., Ding, Y., Yang, Z.L., Li, S.B., Zhou, X.S., Fan, F.R., Zhang, W., Zhou, Z.Y., Wu, D.Y., Ren, B., Wang, Z.L., Tian, Z.Q., 2010. Shell-isolated nanoparticle-enhanced Raman spectroscopy. Nature 464, 392–395.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Cayoun, B.A., 2015. Mindfulness-integrated CBT for Well-being and Personal Growth. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, Chichester, UK.

An edited book

Khachidze, V., Wang, T., Siddiqui, S., Liu, V., Cappuccio, S., Lim, A. (Eds.), 2012. Contemporary Research on E-business Technology and Strategy: International Conference, iCETS 2012, Tianjin, China, August 29-31, 2012, Revised Selected Papers, Communications in Computer and Information Science. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg.

A chapter in an edited book

Minton, G.E., 2013. The Second Chapter, in: Minton, G.E. (Ed.), John Bale’s “The Image of Both Churches.” Springer Netherlands, Dordrecht, pp. 61–73.

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 Computers and Operations Research.

Blog post

Andrew, E., 2015. Narcolepsy Medication Could Be A Safe “Smart Drug” [WWW Document]. IFLScience. URL https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/narcolepsy-medication-could-be-safe-smart-drug/ (accessed 10.30.18).

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, 2003. Airport Passenger Screening: Preliminary Observations on Progress Made and Challenges Remaining (No. GAO-03-1173). 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

O’Connell, A.M., 2008. Customer retention and leadership in the nonprofit healthcare organization (Doctoral dissertation). University of Phoenix, Phoenix, AZ.

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

(nyt), S.K., 2002. World Briefing | Europe: Moldova: Political Tension. New York Times A10.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (McCarty, 2003).
This sentence cites two references (McCarty, 2003; Pujolle-Robic and Noirez, 2001).

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

Two authors: (Pujolle-Robic and Noirez, 2001)
Three or more authors: (Li et al., 2010)

About the journal

Full journal title	Computers and Operations Research
Abbreviation	Comput. Oper. Res.
ISSN (print)	0305-0548
Scope	General Computer Science Management Science and Operations Research Modelling and Simulation