How to format your references using the Requirements Engineering citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Requirements 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	Find the style here: output styles overview
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

Altman MS (2010) Chemistry. CO prefers the aisle seat. Science 327:789–790

A journal article with 2 authors

Ravizza G, Peucker-Ehrenbrink B (2003) Chemostratigraphic evidence of Deccan volcanism from the marine osmium isotope record. Science 302:1392–1395

A journal article with 3 authors

Hillebrandt H, Friston KJ, Blakemore S-J (2014) Effective connectivity during animacy perception--dynamic causal modelling of Human Connectome Project data. Sci Rep 4:6240

A journal article with 5 or more authors

Bosman M, Ye E, Tan SF, et al (2013) Surface plasmon damping quantified with an electron nanoprobe. Sci Rep 3:1312

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Gamenara D, Seoane GA, Saenz-Méndez P, de María PD (2012) Redox Biocatalysis. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ

An edited book

Fang Z, Smith RL Jr (2016) Production of Biofuels and Chemicals from Lignin. Springer, Singapore

A chapter in an edited book

Genz A, Bretz F (2009) Further Topics. In: Bretz F (ed) Computation of Multivariate Normal and t Probabilities. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, pp 55–69

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 Requirements Engineering.

Blog post

Andrew E (2015) New Monkey Species Identified From Its Unusual Penis And Scrotum. In: IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/previously-unknown-monkey-species-identified-its-unusual-penis-and-scrotum/. Accessed 30 Oct 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

Government Accountability Office (1999) Army Medium Trucks: Information on Delivery Delays and Corrosion Problems. U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Lee KS (2008) Towards an improved baton technique: The application and modification of conducting gestures drawn from the methods of Rudolf, Green and Saitö for enhanced performance of orchestral interpretations. Doctoral dissertation, University of Arizona

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

Dominus S (2016) They Were With Her From the Very Start. New York Times ST1

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	Requirements Engineering
ISSN (print)	0947-3602
ISSN (online)	1432-010X
Scope	Information Systems Software