How to format your references using the Journal of Structural Engineering citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Journal of Structural 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

Bollen, M. 2015. “Cell cycle: It takes three to find the exit.” Nature, 517 (7532): 29–30.

A journal article with 2 authors

Dagan, T., and W. Martin. 2009. “Microbiology. Seeing green and red in diatom genomes.” Science (New York, N.Y.), 324 (5935): 1651–1652.

A journal article with 3 authors

Lynch, M., B. Koskella, and S. Schaack. 2006. “Mutation pressure and the evolution of organelle genomic architecture.” Science (New York, N.Y.), 311 (5768): 1727–1730.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Stuart, A. J., P. A. Kosintsev, T. F. G. Higham, and A. M. Lister. 2004. “Pleistocene to Holocene extinction dynamics in giant deer and woolly mammoth.” Nature, 431 (7009): 684–689.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Ketring, K. L., and M. B. Glaze. 2012. Atlas of Feline Ophthalmology. West Sussex, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

An edited book

Holzinger, A., C. Röcker, and M. Ziefle, eds. 2015. Smart Health: Open Problems and Future Challenges. Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Cham: Springer International Publishing.

A chapter in an edited book

Minnameier, G. 2010. “Abduction, Induction, and Analogy.” Model-Based Reasoning in Science and Technology: Abduction, Logic, and Computational Discovery, Studies in Computational Intelligence, edited by L. Magnani, W. Carnielli, and C. Pizzi, 107–119. Berlin, Heidelberg: 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 Structural Engineering.

Blog post

Taub, B. 2015. “Scientists Can Now Measure The ‘Mystical’ Effects Of Magic Mushrooms.” IFLScience. IFLScience. Accessed October 30, 2018. https://www.iflscience.com/brain/scientists-can-now-measure-mystical-effects-magic-mushrooms/.

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. 2016. Youth with Autism: Roundtable Views of Services Needed During the Transition into Adulthood. 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

Morgan, A. J. 2017. “Analyzing Red and Gray Stages of Bark Beetle Attack in the San Bernardino National Forest Using Remote Sensing.” 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

Hollander, S. 2002. “Staten Island Wins Championship of Class A League Again.” New York Times, September 13, 2002.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Bollen 2015).
This sentence cites two references (Bollen 2015; Dagan and Martin 2009).

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

Two authors: (Dagan and Martin 2009)
Three or more authors: (Stuart et al. 2004)

About the journal

Full journal title	Journal of Structural Engineering
Abbreviation	J. Struct. Eng. (N. Y.)
ISSN (print)	0733-9445
ISSN (online)	1943-541X
Scope	Civil and Structural Engineering Mechanical Engineering Mechanics of Materials Building and Construction General Materials Science