How to format your references using the Reliability Engineering and System Safety citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Reliability Engineering and System Safety. 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]

Chong Y. Optical devices: photonic insulators with a twist. Nature 2013;496:173–4.

A journal article with 2 authors

[1]

Gerst A, Savage MK. Seismic anisotropy beneath Ruapehu volcano: a possible eruption forecasting tool. Science 2004;306:1543–7.

A journal article with 3 authors

[1]

Oppo DW, McManus JF, Cullen JL. Palaeo-oceanography: Deepwater variability in the Holocene epoch. Nature 2003;422:277.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

[1]

Efeyan A, Garcia-Cao I, Herranz D, Velasco-Miguel S, Serrano M. Tumour biology: Policing of oncogene activity by p53. Nature 2006;443:159.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

[1]

Jones NF. The JCT Major Project Form. Oxford, UK: Blackwell Publishing Ltd; 2008.

An edited book

[1]

Zhou Y. Empirical Analysis on Income Inequality of Chinese Residents. vol. 1. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer; 2012.

A chapter in an edited book

[1]

Harmon-Jones E, Peterson CK, Harmon-Jones C. Anger, Motivation, and Asymmetrical Frontal Cortical Activations. In: Potegal M, Stemmler G, Spielberger C, editors. International Handbook of Anger: Constituent and Concomitant Biological, Psychological, and Social Processes, New York, NY: Springer; 2010, p. 61–78.

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 Reliability Engineering and System Safety.

Blog post

[1]

Andrew E. Iconic Boab Trees Trace Journeys Of Ancient Aboriginal People. IFLScience 2015. https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/iconic-boab-trees-trace-journeys-ancient-aboriginal-people/ (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. Additional Costs to Government: Reflagging Kuwaiti Ships and Protecting Them in the Persian Gulf. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 1987.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

[1]

Wang T. Talking to Strangers: Chinese Youth and Social Media. Doctoral dissertation. University of California San Diego, 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]

Kenigsberg B. You’re Killing Me Susana. New York Times 2017:C13.

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	Reliability Engineering and System Safety
Abbreviation	Reliab. Eng. Syst. Saf.
ISSN (print)	0951-8320
Scope	Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering Safety, Risk, Reliability and Quality