How to format your references using the Optics and Photonics News citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Optics and Photonics News (OPN). 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

D. Sarewitz, "World view: Politicize me," Nature 467, 26 (2010).

A journal article with 2 authors

C. Class and S. L. Goldstein, "Evolution of helium isotopes in the Earth’s mantle," Nature 436, 1107–1112 (2005).

A journal article with 3 authors

Y. Ramu, Y. Xu, and Z. Lu, "Enzymatic activation of voltage-gated potassium channels," Nature 442, 696–699 (2006).

A journal article with 4 or more authors

M. L. Santiago, M. Montano, R. Benitez, R. J. Messer, W. Yonemoto, B. Chesebro, K. J. Hasenkrug, and W. C. Greene, "Apobec3 encodes Rfv3, a gene influencing neutralizing antibody control of retrovirus infection," Science 321, 1343–1346 (2008).

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

P. I. Good, Introduction to Statistics through Resampling Methods and R/S-Plus® (John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2005).

An edited book

V. Torra, Y. Narukawa, and Y. Endo, eds., Modeling Decisions for Artificial Intelligence: 11th International Conference, MDAI 2014, Tokyo, Japan, October 29-31, 2014. Proceedings, Lecture Notes in Computer Science (Springer International Publishing, 2014), Vol. 8825.

A chapter in an edited book

A. Ratnadass, É. Blanchart, and P. Lecomte, "Ecological Interactions Within the Biodiversity of Cultivated Systems," in Cultivating Biodiversity to Transform Agriculture, É. Hainzelin, ed. (Springer Netherlands, 2013), pp. 141–179.

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 Optics and Photonics News.

Blog post

R. Andrews, "Indonesian Volcano Erupts Electric-Blue Lava," .

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, Year 2000 Computing Challenge: Important Progress Made, But Much Work Remains to Avoid Disruption of Critical Services (U.S. Government Printing Office, 1999).

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

S. J. Melhorn, "The microstructure of food intake under conditions of high-fat diet, social stress and social subordination," Doctoral dissertation, University of Cincinnati (2009).

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

B. Brantley, "Theater; The Terrain Where Generations Meet," New York Times (September 22, 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	Optics and Photonics News
ISSN (print)	1047-6938
ISSN (online)	1541-3721
Scope