How to format your references using the Practice Periodical on Structural Design and Construction citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Practice Periodical on Structural Design and Construction. 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
Dalton, R. 2001. “Arson hampers conservation work.” Nature, 411 (6837): 509.
A journal article with 2 authors
Pilkey, O. H., and J. A. G. Cooper. 2004. “Climate. Society and sea level rise.” Science, 303 (5665): 1781–1782.
A journal article with 3 authors
Camilleri, E., P. P. Rohde, and J. Twamley. 2014. “Quantum walks with tuneable self-avoidance in one dimension.” Sci. Rep., 4: 4791.
A journal article with 4 or more authors
Wittmann, C. W., M. F. Wszolek, J. M. Shulman, P. M. Salvaterra, J. Lewis, M. Hutton, and M. B. Feany. 2001. “Tauopathy in Drosophila: neurodegeneration without neurofibrillary tangles.” Science, 293 (5530): 711–714.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book
Estopinal, S. V., and W. Lathrop. 2011. Professional Surveyors and Real Property Descriptions. Hoboken, New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
An edited book
Allen, C. 2008. The Essential Guide to Open Source Flash Development. (W. Arnold, A. Balkan, N. Cannasse, J. Grden, M. Gunesch, M. Hughes, R. J. MacDonald, and A. Zupko, eds.). Berkeley, CA: Apress.
A chapter in an edited book
Cimatti, A., A. Griggio, S. Mover, and S. Tonetta. 2014. “IC3 Modulo Theories via Implicit Predicate Abstraction.” Tools and Algorithms for the Construction and Analysis of Systems: 20th International Conference, TACAS 2014, Held as Part of the European Joint Conferences on Theory and Practice of Software, ETAPS 2014, Grenoble, France, April 5-13, 2014. Proceedings, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, E. Ábrahám and K. Havelund, eds., 46–61. Berlin, Heidelberg: 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 Practice Periodical on Structural Design and Construction.

Blog post
Andrew, E. 2015. “How Poo-Sniffing Detective Dogs Can Save Elusive, Rare Gorillas.” IFLScience. IFLScience. Accessed October 30, 2018. https://www.iflscience.com/environment/how-poo-sniffing-detective-dogs-can-save-elusive-rare-gorillas/.

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. 2005. Freight Transportation: Short Sea Shipping Option Shows Importance of Systematic Approach to Public Investment Decisions. 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
Ochoa-Bontemps, R. S. 2012. “Rebuilding the Broken Mirror: An Imaginal Approach to the Multicultural Self.” Doctoral dissertation. Carpinteria, CA: Pacifica Graduate Institute.

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
Otis, J. 2016. “In Debt, but Undaunted, a Mother Finds Her Home.” New York Times, December 8, 2016.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Dalton 2001).
This sentence cites two references (Dalton 2001; Pilkey and Cooper 2004).

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

  • Two authors: (Pilkey and Cooper 2004)
  • Three or more authors: (Wittmann et al. 2001)

About the journal

Full journal titlePractice Periodical on Structural Design and Construction
ISSN (print)1084-0680
ISSN (online)1943-5576
ScopeArts and Humanities (miscellaneous)
Civil and Structural Engineering
Building and Construction

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