How to format your references using the Control Engineering Practice citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Control Engineering Practice. 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:

PaperpileThe citation style is built in and you can choose it in Settings > Citation Style or Paperpile > Citation Style in Google Docs.
EndNoteDownload the output style file
Mendeley, Zotero, Papers, and othersThe style is either built in or you can download a CSL file that is supported by most references management programs.
BibTeXBibTeX syles 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
Magistretti, P. J. (2009). Neuroscience. Low-cost travel in neurons. Science (New York, N.Y.), 325(5946), 1349–1351.
A journal article with 2 authors
Dudney, N. J., & Li, J. (2015). Materials science. Using all energy in a battery. Science (New York, N.Y.), 347(6218), 131–132.
A journal article with 3 authors
Iguchi, I., Yamaguchi, T., & Sugimoto, A. (2001). Diamagnetic activity above Tc as a precursor to superconductivity in La2-xSrxCuO4 thin films. Nature, 412(6845), 420–423.
A journal article with 8 or more authors
Depuydt, M., Leonard, S. E., Vertommen, D., Denoncin, K., Morsomme, P., Wahni, K., Messens, J., Carroll, K. S., & Collet, J.-F. (2009). A periplasmic reducing system protects single cysteine residues from oxidation. Science (New York, N.Y.), 326(5956), 1109–1111.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book
Forshaw, M. (2006). Understanding Headaches and Migraines. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
An edited book
Christakos, G. (2005). Interdisciplinary Public Health Reasoning and Epidemic Modelling: The Case of Black Death (R. A. Olea, M. L. Serre, H.-L. Yu, & L.-L. Wang, Eds.). Springer.
A chapter in an edited book
Bivand, R. S., Pebesma, E., & Gómez-Rubio, V. (2013). Spatial Data Import and Export. In E. Pebesma & V. Gómez-Rubio (Eds.), Applied Spatial Data Analysis with R (pp. 83–125). Springer.

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 Control Engineering Practice.

Blog post
Carpineti, A. (2016, September 27). Failed Stars Could Reveal New Clues About How Planets Form. IFLScience; IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/space/failed-stars-could-reveal-new-clues-about-how-planets-form/

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. (1987). [Comments on Proposed Oregon Purchase of Rail Line With Oil Overcharge Settlement] (B-226517). U.S. Government Printing Office.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation
Ward, D. (2014). Teaching with the End in Mind: A Teacher’s Life History as a Legacy of Educational Leaders [Doctoral dissertation]. University of South Florida.

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
Brantley, B., & Green, J. (2017, May 11). Just How Great Was That ‘Comet’? New York Times, AR16.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Magistretti, 2009).
This sentence cites two references (Dudney & Li, 2015; Magistretti, 2009).

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

  • Two authors: (Dudney & Li, 2015)
  • Three authors: (Iguchi et al., 2001)
  • 6 or more authors: (Depuydt et al., 2009)

About the journal

Full journal titleControl Engineering Practice
AbbreviationControl Eng. Pract.
ISSN (print)0967-0661
ScopeComputer Science Applications
Control and Systems Engineering
Electrical and Electronic Engineering
Applied Mathematics

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