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

Sobek, S., 2014. Climate science: cold carbon storage. Nature 511, 415–417.

A journal article with 2 authors

Kang, T.M., Hilgemann, D.W., 2004. Multiple transport modes of the cardiac Na+/Ca2+ exchanger. Nature 427, 544–548.

A journal article with 3 authors

Robinson, D.P., Das, S., Watts, A.B., 2006. Earthquake rupture stalled by a subducting fracture zone. Science 312, 1203–1205.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Tian, J., Zhang, F., Cheng, J., Guo, S., Liu, P., Wang, H., 2014. Antidepressant-like activity of adhyperforin, a novel constituent of Hypericum perforatum L. Sci. Rep. 4, 5632.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Jones, N.F., 2008. The JCT Major Project Form. Blackwell Publishing Ltd, Oxford, UK.

An edited book

Cao, B.-Y., Nasseri, H. (Eds.), 2014. Fuzzy Information & Engineering and Operations Research & Management, Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg.

A chapter in an edited book

Chou, Y.H., Bai, C.Y., Ger, M.D., Chao, C.L., Lee, S.J., Lee, C.Y., 2007. The Structure and Properties of Electroless Ni-P and Ni-Mo-P Deposits, in: Hinduja, S., Fan, K.-C. (Eds.), Proceedings of the 35th International MATADOR Conference: Formerly The International Machine Tool Design and Research Conference. Springer, London, pp. 21–24.

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

Luntz, S., 2015. Study Finds That Online Harassers Really Are Losers [WWW Document]. IFLScience. URL https://www.iflscience.com/brain/online-harassers-really-are-losers/ (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, 1992. Aviation Safety: Better Oversight Would Reduce the Risk of Air Taxi Accidents (No. T-RCED-92-27). 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

Tomlinson, K.L., 2008. Working with the imaginal: Art-making and dialogue with figures of soul (Doctoral dissertation). Pacifica Graduate Institute, Carpinteria, CA.

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

Feeney, K., 2007. Cellphone Aside, Step Up for Soup. New York Times NJ6.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Sobek, 2014).
This sentence cites two references (Kang and Hilgemann, 2004; Sobek, 2014).

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

Two authors: (Kang and Hilgemann, 2004)
Three or more authors: (Tian 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

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