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

Benovic JL (2015) Structural biology: Arresting developments in receptor signalling. Nature 523:538–539

A journal article with 2 authors

Embley TM, Martin W (2006) Eukaryotic evolution, changes and challenges. Nature 440:623–630

A journal article with 3 authors

Munsky B, Neuert G, van Oudenaarden A (2012) Using gene expression noise to understand gene regulation. Science 336:183–187

A journal article with 5 or more authors

Knox K, Carrigan D, Simmons G, et al (2011) No evidence of murine-like gammaretroviruses in CFS patients previously identified as XMRV-infected. Science 333:94–97

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Li F (2006) Developing Chemical Information Systems. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ

An edited book

Duvernoy HM (2013) The Human Hippocampus: Functional Anatomy, Vascularization and Serial Sections with MRI, 4th ed. 2013. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

A chapter in an edited book

Miao J (2013) An ERP Study of Semantic Anomalies in Second Language Processing. In: Liu D, Alippi C, Zhao D, Hussain A (eds) Advances in Brain Inspired Cognitive Systems: 6th International Conference, BICS 2013, Beijing, China, June 9-11, 2013. Proceedings. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, pp 38–45

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

Davis J (2016) New Laser Treatment Based On Deep-Sea Bacteria Effectively Treats Prostate Cancer. In: IFLScience. 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 (2005) Hurricanes Katrina and Rita: Provision of Charitable Assistance. 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

Barger B (2014) A Quantitative Study of Educational Poverty, School Location, and Student Achievement Measured by the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA). Doctoral dissertation, Lindenwood University

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

McKINLEY JC Jr, Southall A, Baker AL (2017) In the South Bronx, Lives Derailed by Guns. New York Times A28

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

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