New Citation Format

Beginning with Vol. 44, Issue 1, Optical Engineering (OE) transitioned from traditional page numbers to six-digit citation identifiers (CIDs). At the same time, OE began publishing issues online in an article-at-a-time publication mode. Use of CIDs in place of traditional page numbers allows an issue to build online one article at a time while retaining the ability to segment tables of contents by article type or subject area; this accelerates online publication of individual articles, which are published online individually as soon as author proof corrections are incorporated. Utilization of CIDs also allows articles to be fully citable as soon as they are published online, using the same identifier for both online and print versions.

The structure of the six-digit citation identifier for OE is defined as follows:

• first two digits (01-12):  indicate the issue number
• middle two digits (01-99):  indicate the article type and/or subject area (as defined below)
• last two digits (01-99):  assigned according to publication order, within that issue and section

Definitions of this journal's current article type and subject area code numbers (the middle two digits of the CID) appear in the table below:

The format for citing articles published in Optical Engineering is only marginally changed, with the six-digit CID appearing in the place traditionally filled by a page number. An example of the correct citation format for OE is:

A. Smith and B. Jones, Opt. Eng. 44, 023407 (2005).

In this fictitious example, the article by Smith and Jones was published in OE in Issue 2 of Volume 44, as the seventh article published in the section "Optical Fabrication."

In the full-text PDF file available online and in the printed article, the CID appears on each printed page. Appended at the end of the CID is a hyphen followed by a consecutive page number. For the sample article above, the printed pages would carry this page numbering: 023407-1, 023407-2, 023407-3, etc. The hyphen and additional digits should not be used when citing or searching for an article.

Direct questions and comments about citation identifiers to the Office of the Managing Editor at journals@spie.org