How to format your references using the Engineering citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Engineering. 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.
EndNoteFind the style here: output styles overview
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
[1]
Jackson CM. Archaeology. Glassmaking in Bronze-Age Egypt. Science 2005;308:1750–2.
A journal article with 2 authors
[1]
Reinhart BJ, Bartel DP. Small RNAs correspond to centromere heterochromatic repeats. Science 2002;297:1831.
A journal article with 3 authors
[1]
Li de la Sierra-Gallay I, Pellegrini O, Condon C. Structural basis for substrate binding, cleavage and allostery in the tRNA maturase RNase Z. Nature 2005;433:657–61.
A journal article with 7 or more authors
[1]
Rothschild D, Weissbrod O, Barkan E, Kurilshikov A, Korem T, Zeevi D, et al. Environment dominates over host genetics in shaping human gut microbiota. Nature 2018;555:210–5.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book
[1]
Furger C. Live Cell Assays. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.; 2016.
An edited book
[1]
Glück R, Yokoyama T, editors. Reversible Computation: 4th International Workshop, RC 2012, Copenhagen, Denmark, July 2-3, 2012. Revised Papers. vol. 7581. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer; 2013.
A chapter in an edited book
[1]
Dominguez-Sal D, Urbón-Bayes P, Giménez-Vañó A, Gómez-Villamor S, Martínez-Bazán N, Larriba-Pey JL. Survey of Graph Database Performance on the HPC Scalable Graph Analysis Benchmark. In: Shen HT, Pei J, Özsu MT, Zou L, Lu J, Ling T-W, et al., editors. Web-Age Information Management: WAIM 2010 International Workshops: IWGD 2010, XMLDM 2010, WCMT 2010, Jiuzhaigou Valley, China, July 15-17, 2010 Revised Selected Papers, Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer; 2010, p. 37–48.

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 Engineering.

Blog post
[1]
Hale T. Video Shows An Orca Throwing A Seal 80 Feet Into The Air. IFLScience 2015.

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. Effective Schools Programs: Their Extent and Characteristics. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 1989.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation
[1]
Mason MC. A Heart Like a Fakir’s The Life and Times of General Sir James Abbott, KCB. Doctoral dissertation. George Washington University, 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]
(nyt) SK. World Briefing | Europe: Russia: Chechnya Death Toll. New York Times 2001:A8.

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 titleEngineering
AbbreviationEngineering (Beijing)
ISSN (print)2095-8099
ScopeGeneral Chemical Engineering
General Computer Science
Energy Engineering and Power Technology
General Engineering
Environmental Engineering
Materials Science (miscellaneous)

Other styles