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

Körding, K., 2007. Decision theory: what “should” the nervous system do? Science 318, 606–610.

A journal article with 2 authors

Schiermeier, Q., Tollefson, J., 2007. Climate change: a Nobel cause. Nature 449, 766–767.

A journal article with 3 authors

Shimojo, S., Kamitani, Y., Nishida, S., 2001. Afterimage of perceptually filled-in surface. Science 293, 1677–1680.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Lopez-Vaamonde, C., Koning, J.W., Brown, R.M., Jordan, W.C., Bourke, A.F.G., 2004. Social parasitism by male-producing reproductive workers in a eusocial insect. Nature 430, 557–560.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Ezra, D., Collie, B., Smith, M.X., 2009. The Retirement Plan Solution. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ.

An edited book

Yu, W., He, H., Zhang, N. (Eds.), 2009. Advances in Neural Networks – ISNN 2009: 6th International Symposium on Neural Networks, ISNN 2009 Wuhan, China, May 26-29, 2009 Proceedings, Part I, Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg.

A chapter in an edited book

Banasiak, J., Lachowicz, M., 2014. Asymptotic Expansion Method in a Singularly Perturbed McKendrick Problem, in: Lachowicz, M. (Ed.), Methods of Small Parameter in Mathematical Biology, Modeling and Simulation in Science, Engineering and Technology. Springer International Publishing, Cham, pp. 143–172.

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

Hale, T., 2016. Scientist Steps Closer To Understanding The Enigmatic Noises Of The Northern Lights [WWW Document]. IFLScience. URL https://www.iflscience.com/environment/scientist-steps-closer-to-understanding-the-enigmatic-noises-of-the-northern-lights/ (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, 1995. Advance Sheets: Volume 74, Decisions of the Comptroller General of the United States (No. OGC-95-10). 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

Sherman, C.P., 2001. The effect of head and heart on municipal employee retention (Doctoral dissertation). University of Phoenix, Phoenix, AZ.

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

Wagner, J., 2017. Extra Innings and Late-Game Twists. New York Times A2.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Körding, 2007).
This sentence cites two references (Körding, 2007; Schiermeier and Tollefson, 2007).

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

Two authors: (Schiermeier and Tollefson, 2007)
Three or more authors: (Lopez-Vaamonde et al., 2004)

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