How to format your references using the Rock Mechanics and Rock Engineering citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Rock Mechanics and Rock 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:

PaperpileThe citation style is built in and you can choose it in Settings > Citation Style or Paperpile > Citation Style in Google Docs.
EndNoteFind the style here: output styles overview
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
Stewart L (2014) Gerontology: Will you still need me, will you still feed me? Nature 514:S14-5
A journal article with 2 authors
Kim J, DeBerardinis RJ (2013) Cancer. Silencing a metabolic oncogene. Science 340:558–559
A journal article with 3 authors
Clark DA, Mitra PP, Wang SS (2001) Scalable architecture in mammalian brains. Nature 411:189–193
A journal article with 5 or more authors
Tanaka H, Homma K, Iwane AH, et al (2002) The motor domain determines the large step of myosin-V. Nature 415:192–195

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book
Geren RL (2016) Applying the Building Code. John Wiley & Sons, Inc, Hoboken, NJ
An edited book
Cardoso J, Fromm H, Nickel S, et al (eds) (2015) Fundamentals of Service Systems, 1st ed. 2015. Springer International Publishing, Cham
A chapter in an edited book
Dürr D, Teufel S (2009) Chance. In: Dürr D (ed) Bohmian Mechanics: The Physics and Mathematics of Quantum Theory. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, pp 49–107

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 Rock Mechanics and Rock Engineering.

Blog post
Hamilton K (2016) How Pokemon Go Turned Couch Potatoes Into Fitness Fanatics Without Them Even Realising It. 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 (1973) Contract Award Protest. 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
Carlson L (2010) From Albéniz to Arbós: The orchestration of “Iberia.” Doctoral dissertation, University of Maryland, College Park

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
Vecsey G (2011) Indomitable Russell Values One Accolade Above the Rest. New York Times SP1

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Stewart 2014).
This sentence cites two references (Kim and DeBerardinis 2013; Stewart 2014).

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

  • Two authors: (Kim and DeBerardinis 2013)
  • Three or more authors: (Tanaka et al. 2002)

About the journal

Full journal titleRock Mechanics and Rock Engineering
AbbreviationRock Mech. Rock Eng.
ISSN (print)0723-2632
ISSN (online)1434-453X
ScopeGeology
Geotechnical Engineering and Engineering Geology
Civil and Structural Engineering
General Earth and Planetary Sciences
Earth and Planetary Sciences (miscellaneous)
General Engineering
General Environmental Science

Other styles