How to format your references using the Operational Research citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Operational 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	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

Borhani DW (2011) Comment on “A bacterium that can grow by using arsenic instead of phosphorus.” Science 332:1149; author reply 1149

A journal article with 2 authors

Rus D, Tolley MT (2015) Design, fabrication and control of soft robots. Nature 521:467–475

A journal article with 3 authors

Fischle W, Wang Y, Allis CD (2003) Binary switches and modification cassettes in histone biology and beyond. Nature 425:475–479

A journal article with 5 or more authors

Elsabahy M, Zhang S, Zhang F, et al (2013) Surface charges and shell crosslinks each play significant roles in mediating degradation, biofouling, cytotoxicity and immunotoxicity for polyphosphoester-based nanoparticles. Sci Rep 3:3313

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Tourlakis G (2008) Mathematical Logic. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ

An edited book

Naumenko K, Aßmus M (eds) (2016) Advanced Methods of Continuum Mechanics for Materials and Structures. Springer, Singapore

A chapter in an edited book

Strang J (2010) Theoria and Logical Empiricism On the tensions between the National and the International in Philosophy. In: Manninen J, Stadler F (eds) The Vienna Circle in the Nordic Countries. Springer Netherlands, Dordrecht, pp 69–89

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 Operational Research.

Blog post

Fang J (2014) Male Researchers Stress Out Lab Rodents. In: IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/male-researchers-stress-out-lab-rodents/. 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 (2008) Electronic Government: Additional OMB Leadership Needed to Optimize Use of New Federal Employee Identification Cards. 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

Bodenmiller JJ (2015) A quantitative relational analysis of leadership style and leader-accountability in nonprofit organizations. Doctoral dissertation, University of Phoenix

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

McKINLEY JC Jr (2017) Witness Lays Out Events Ending in Brazen Killing. New York Times A20

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Borhani 2011).
This sentence cites two references (Borhani 2011; Rus and Tolley 2015).

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

Two authors: (Rus and Tolley 2015)
Three or more authors: (Elsabahy et al. 2013)

About the journal

Full journal title	Operational Research
ISSN (print)	1109-2858
ISSN (online)	1866-1505
Scope	Management of Technology and Innovation Strategy and Management Computational Theory and Mathematics Management Science and Operations Research Statistics, Probability and Uncertainty Modelling and Simulation Numerical Analysis