How to format your references using the Transportation Research Part A citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Transportation Research Part A. 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

van Der Lee, S., 2001. Geology. Deep below North America. Science 294, 1297–1298.

A journal article with 2 authors

Pfisterer, A.B., Schmid, B., 2002. Diversity-dependent production can decrease the stability of ecosystem functioning. Nature 416, 84–86.

A journal article with 3 authors

Ostojic, S., Somfai, E., Nienhuis, B., 2006. Scale invariance and universality of force networks in static granular matter. Nature 439, 828–830.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Haeussner, E., Buehlmeyer, A., Schmitz, C., von Koch, F.E., Frank, H.-G., 2014. Novel 3D microscopic analysis of human placental villous trees reveals unexpected significance of branching angles. Sci. Rep. 4, 6192.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Riegel, M., Kroeselberg, D., Chindapol, A., Premec, D., 2009. Deploying Mobile WiMAX. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ.

An edited book

Nutting, J., 2010. Beginning iPad Development for iPhone Developers: Mastering the iPad SDK. Apress, Berkeley, CA.

A chapter in an edited book

Vyroubalová, E., 2016. Catholic and Puritan Conspiracies in Samuel Ward’s The Double Deliverance (1621), in: Gribben, C., Spurlock, S. (Eds.), Puritans and Catholics in the Trans-Atlantic World 1600–1800. Palgrave Macmillan UK, London, pp. 47–65.

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 Transportation Research Part A.

Blog post

O`Callaghan, J., 2016. Funnel Formed By Volcano On Mars Could Be A Prime Location For Life [WWW Document]. IFLScience. URL https://www.iflscience.com/space/funnel-volcano-mars-life/ (accessed 10.30.18).

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, 1984. Reasons for Lack of Replacement for Failed Weather Satellite (No. RCED-84-198). 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

Forshey, T.M., 2013. Neural basis of the neurological diagnostic power of vibrotactile sensory testing (Doctoral dissertation). University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC.

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

Otis, J., 2017. Staring Down Homelessness With a Wayfaring Spirit. New York Times A21.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (van Der Lee, 2001).
This sentence cites two references (Pfisterer and Schmid, 2002; van Der Lee, 2001).

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

Two authors: (Pfisterer and Schmid, 2002)
Three or more authors: (Haeussner et al., 2014)

About the journal

Full journal title	Transportation Research Part A
Abbreviation	Transp. Res. Part A Policy Pract.
ISSN (print)	0965-8564
Scope	Management Science and Operations Research Civil and Structural Engineering Transportation