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

Widera, A. 2015. “Physics. A walk across a quantum lattice.” Science, 347 (6227): 1200–1201.

A journal article with 2 authors

Hathaway, D. H., and L. Rightmire. 2010. “Variations in the Sun’s meridional flow over a solar cycle.” Science, 327 (5971): 1350–1352.

A journal article with 3 authors

Acevedo, A., L. Brodsky, and R. Andino. 2014. “Mutational and fitness landscapes of an RNA virus revealed through population sequencing.” Nature, 505 (7485): 686–690.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Crawford, J. M., P. M. Thomas, J. R. Scheerer, A. L. Vagstad, N. L. Kelleher, and C. A. Townsend. 2008. “Deconstruction of iterative multidomain polyketide synthase function.” Science, 320 (5873): 243–246.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Zirngibl, L. 2005. Antifungal Azoles. Weinheim, FRG: Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA.

An edited book

Bhushan, B. (Ed.). 2012. Encyclopedia of Nanotechnology. Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands.

A chapter in an edited book

Neuman, T. 2006. “Positional and Restraint Asphyxia.” Sudden Deaths in Custody, Forensic Science and Medicine, D. L. Ross and T. C. Chan, eds., 39–57. Totowa, NJ: Humana Press.

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

Andrew, E. 2016. “Good Tests Make Children Fail – Here’s Why.” IFLScience. IFLScience. Accessed October 30, 2018. https://www.iflscience.com/editors-blog/good-tests-make-children-fail-here-s-why/.

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. 1980. Community-Based Correctional Programs Can Do More To Help Offenders. 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

Newsome, G. A. 2009. “Novel instrumentation and method development for a quadrupole ion trap mass spectrometer.” Doctoral dissertation. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina.

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

Wagner, J. 2016. “Already Loaded With Talent, Cubs May Get a Slugger Back From an Injury.” New York Times, October 25, 2016.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Widera 2015).
This sentence cites two references (Hathaway and Rightmire 2010; Widera 2015).

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

Two authors: (Hathaway and Rightmire 2010)
Three or more authors: (Crawford et al. 2008)

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

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