How to format your references using the Precision Engineering citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Precision 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

[1]

Parada LV. Public health: Life lessons. Nature 2011;480:S11-3.

A journal article with 2 authors

[1]

Hogue TS, Pincetl S. WATER CONSERVATION. Are you watering your lawn? Science 2015;348:1319–20.

A journal article with 3 authors

[1]

Samokhvalov AV, Shekhter RI, Buzdin AI. Stimulation of a singlet superconductivity in SFS weak links by spin-exchange scattering of cooper pairs. Sci Rep 2014;4:5671.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

[1]

Park J-O, Tsuru T, Kodaira S, Cummins PR, Kaneda Y. Splay fault branching along the Nankai subduction zone. Science 2002;297:1157–60.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

[1]

Hooper J, Zalewski A, Watanabe E. Advanced Charting Techniques for High Probability Trading. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.; 2013.

An edited book

[1]

Secchi C. Control of Interactive Robotic Interfaces: A Port-Hamiltonian Approach. vol. 29. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer; 2007.

A chapter in an edited book

[1]

Forzati M, Chen J, Kantor M, Lannoo B, Larsen CP, Mattsson C, et al. Economics of Next-Generation Networks. In: Teixeira A, Tosi Beleffi GM, editors. Optical Transmission: The FP7 BONE Project Experience, Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands; 2012, p. 235–74.

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 Precision Engineering.

Blog post

[1]

Luntz S. First Baby Born From Womb Transplant. IFLScience 2014. https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/first-baby-born-womb-transplant/ (accessed October 30, 2018).

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. NASA: Assessments of Major Projects. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 2016.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

[1]

Gillespie L. Trust in Leadership: Investigation of Andragogical Learning and Implications for Student Placement Outcomes. Doctoral dissertation. Lindenwood University, 2014.

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]

Kanter J. Europe’s Leaders Aim to Slow Migration on Dangerous Sea Route From Africa. New York Times 2017:A6.

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 title	Precision Engineering
Abbreviation	Precis. Eng.
ISSN (print)	0141-6359
Scope	General Engineering