How to format your references using the Computers and Structures citation style

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

[1]

Padma TV. Developing countries: The outcomes paradox. Nature 2014;508:S14-5.

A journal article with 2 authors

[1]

Tan LWH, Subramaniam R. Education. Science and the student entrepreneur. Science 2002;298:1556.

A journal article with 3 authors

[1]

Freitas R, Zhang G, Cohn MJ. Evidence that mechanisms of fin development evolved in the midline of early vertebrates. Nature 2006;442:1033–7.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

[1]

Grima B, Chélot E, Xia R, Rouyer F. Morning and evening peaks of activity rely on different clock neurons of the Drosophila brain. Nature 2004;431:869–73.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

[1]

Berntsen ES, Thompson J. A Guide to Starting Your Hedge Fund. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd; 2015.

An edited book

[1]

Benth FE. Paris-Princeton Lectures on Mathematical Finance 2013: Editors: Vicky Henderson, Ronnie Sircar. vol. 2081. Cham: Springer International Publishing; 2013.

A chapter in an edited book

[1]

Goto K, Sasaki Y, Hara T, Nishio S. A Mobile Agents Control Scheme for Multiple Sinks in Dense Mobile Wireless Sensor Networks. In: Stojmenovic I, Cheng Z, Guo S, editors. Mobile and Ubiquitous Systems: Computing, Networking, and Services: 10th International Conference, MOBIQUITOUS 2013, Tokyo, Japan, December 2-4, 2013, Revised Selected Papers, Cham: Springer International Publishing; 2014, p. 52–65.

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 Computers and Structures.

Blog post

[1]

Andrew E. Bright Aurora Spotted On Mars. IFLScience 2015. https://www.iflscience.com/space/bright-aurora-spotted-around-mars/ (accessed October 30, 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

[1]

Government Accountability Office. Satellite Control Capabilities: National Policy Could Help Consolidation and Cost Savings. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 1996.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

[1]

Yahyai S. Optimization of a method for testing ballast water for enterococci and an investigation on the occurrence of antibiotic resistance in vibrio cholerae. Doctoral dissertation. University of Maryland, College Park, 2013.

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

[1]

Paulson M. Friends, Romans, Presidents. New York Times 2017:C1.

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	Computers and Structures
Abbreviation	Comput. Struct.
ISSN (print)	0045-7949
Scope	Computer Science Applications Civil and Structural Engineering Mechanical Engineering General Materials Science Modelling and Simulation