How to format your references using the Journal of Materials in Civil Engineering citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Journal of Materials in Civil 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:

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 references management programs.
BibTeX	BibTeX 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

Marec, F. 2014. “Developmental genetics: Female silkworms have the sex factor.” Nature, 509 (7502): 570–571.

A journal article with 2 authors

Kovács, I. A., and A.-L. Barabási. 2015. “Network science: Destruction perfected.” Nature, 524 (7563): 38–39.

A journal article with 3 authors

Pfanner, N., N. Wiedemann, and C. Meisinger. 2004. “Cell biology. Double membrane fusion.” Science, 305 (5691): 1723–1724.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Yao, Y., W. L. Lu, B. Xu, C. B. Li, C. P. Lin, D. Waxman, and J. F. Feng. 2013. “The increase of the functional entropy of the human brain with age.” Sci. Rep., 3: 2853.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Campbell, A. K. 2014. Intracellular Calcium. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

An edited book

Bastin, G. 2016. Stability and Boundary Stabilization of 1-D Hyperbolic Systems. Progress in Nonlinear Differential Equations and Their Applications, (J.-M. Coron, ed.). Cham: Springer International Publishing.

A chapter in an edited book

Earle, C. C. 2007. “Surveillance after Primary Therapy.” Cancer Survivorship: Today and Tomorrow, P. A. Ganz, ed., 43–53. New York, NY: 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 Journal of Materials in Civil Engineering.

Blog post

Hamilton, K. 2016. “Is Technology Making Us Dumber Or Smarter? Yes.” IFLScience. IFLScience. Accessed October 30, 2018. https://www.iflscience.com/technology/is-technology-making-us-dumber-or-smarter-yes/.

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. 2015. K-12 Education: Federal Funding for and Characteristics of Public Schools with Extended Learning Time. Washington, DC: 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

Chavez, T. M. 2008. “A quasi-experimental study of the relationship between school structure and student outcomes.” Doctoral dissertation. Phoenix, AZ: University of Phoenix.

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

Seltzer, M. 2017. “Doctor in the House.” New York Times, September 10, 2017.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Marec 2014).
This sentence cites two references (Kovács and Barabási 2015; Marec 2014).

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

Two authors: (Kovács and Barabási 2015)
Three or more authors: (Yao et al. 2013)

About the journal

Full journal title	Journal of Materials in Civil Engineering
Abbreviation	J. Mater. Civ. Eng.
ISSN (print)	0899-1561
ISSN (online)	1943-5533
Scope	Civil and Structural Engineering Mechanics of Materials Building and Construction General Materials Science