How to format your references using the Journal of Materials in Civil Engineering citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Journal of Materials in Civil 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	Download the output style file
Mendeley, Zotero, Papers, and others	The style is either built in or you can download a CSL file that is supported by most reference managers.
BibTeX	BibTeX styles 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

Bains, W. 2012. “Comment on ‘Orthographic processing in baboons (Papio papio).’” Science (New York, N.Y.), 337 (6099): 1173; author reply 1173.

A journal article with 2 authors

Phair, R. D., and T. Misteli. 2000. “High mobility of proteins in the mammalian cell nucleus.” Nature, 404 (6778): 604–609.

A journal article with 3 authors

Willis, G. L., C. Moore, and S. M. Armstrong. 2014. “Parkinson’s disease, lights and melanocytes: looking beyond the retina.” Scientific reports, 4: 3921.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Grimberg, A., H. Baur, P. Bochsler, F. Bühler, D. S. Burnett, C. C. Hays, V. S. Heber, A. J. G. Jurewicz, and R. Wieler. 2006. “Solar wind neon from Genesis: implications for the lunar noble gas record.” Science (New York, N.Y.), 314 (5802): 1133–1135.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Morris, G. L. 2014. Investing with the Trend. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

An edited book

Loper, M. L., ed. 2015. Modeling and Simulation in the Systems Engineering Life Cycle: Core Concepts and Accompanying Lectures. Simulation Foundations, Methods and Applications. London: Springer.

A chapter in an edited book

Nabity, J., L. A. Compbell, M. Zhu, and W. Zhou. 2006. “E-beam Nanolithography Integrated with Scanning Electron Microscope.” Scanning Microscopy for Nanotechnology: Techniques and Applications, edited by W. Zhou and Z. L. Wang, 120–151. New York, NY: Springer.

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 Journal of Materials in Civil Engineering.

Blog post

Andrew, E. 2016. “The Hefty Price Of ‘Study Drug’ Misuse On College Campuses.” IFLScience. IFLScience. Accessed October 30, 2018. https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/hefty-price-study-drug-misuse-college-campuses/.

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. 1975. Opportunities for Improving Computer Use in the Bureau of the Mint. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.

Theses and dissertations

Theses including Ph.D. dissertations, Master's theses or Bachelor theses follow the basic format outlined below.

Doctoral dissertation

Valadez, I. 2010. “A psycho-education peer support group for homeless youth: A grant proposal.” Doctoral dissertation, California State University, Long Beach.

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

Greenhouse, L. 2008. “Justices Take Case on Navy Use of Sonar.” New York Times, June 24, 2008.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Bains 2012).
This sentence cites two references (Bains 2012; Phair and Misteli 2000).

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

Two authors: (Phair and Misteli 2000)
Three or more authors: (Grimberg et al. 2006)

About the journal

Full journal title	Journal of Materials in Civil Engineering
Abbreviation	J. Mater. Civ. Eng.
ISSN (print)	0899-1561
ISSN (online)	1943-5533
Scope	Civil and Structural Engineering Mechanics of Materials Building and Construction General Materials Science