How to format your references using the Practice Periodical on Structural Design and Construction citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Practice Periodical on Structural Design and Construction. 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

Gilbert, D. M. 2001. “Making sense of eukaryotic DNA replication origins.” Science (New York, N.Y.), 294 (5540): 96–100.

A journal article with 2 authors

Higgins, S. I., and S. Scheiter. 2012. “Atmospheric CO2 forces abrupt vegetation shifts locally, but not globally.” Nature, 488 (7410): 209–212.

A journal article with 3 authors

Zhu, G.-Z., G. Radtke, and G. A. Botton. 2012. “Bonding and structure of a reconstructed (001) surface of SrTiO3 from TEM.” Nature, 490 (7420): 384–387.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Cao, T., C.-W. Wei, R. E. Simpson, L. Zhang, and M. J. Cryan. 2014. “Broadband polarization-independent perfect absorber using a phase-change metamaterial at visible frequencies.” Scientific reports, 4: 3955.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Gupta, S. K. 2010. Modern Hydrology and Sustainable Water Development. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

An edited book

Hromkovič, J., M. Nagl, and B. Westfechtel, eds. 2005. Graph-Theoretic Concepts in Computer Science: 30th International Workshop, WG 2004, Bad Honnef, Germany, June 21-23, 2004. Revised Papers. Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer.

A chapter in an edited book

Stanley, K. O., and J. Lehman. 2015. “The Interesting and the Novel.” Why Greatness Cannot Be Planned: The Myth of the Objective, edited by J. Lehman, 39–54. Cham: Springer International Publishing.

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 Practice Periodical on Structural Design and Construction.

Blog post

Luntz, S. 2014. “Probe Spots 101 Geysers On Icy Saturn Moon.” IFLScience. IFLScience. Accessed October 30, 2018. https://www.iflscience.com/space/probe-spots-101-geysers-icy-saturn-moon/.

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. 1993. Goddard Space Flight Center: Decision to Contract for Plant Operations and Maintenance. 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

Simon, P. R. 2013. “Gender grouping and its initial effect on a Title I upper elementary school during the pilot year of implementation.” Doctoral dissertation, Mississippi State University.

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

Sbarbaro, J. A. 2017. “Standard Morning Fare, on the Go.” New York Times, March 22, 2017.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Gilbert 2001).
This sentence cites two references (Gilbert 2001; Higgins and Scheiter 2012).

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

Two authors: (Higgins and Scheiter 2012)
Three or more authors: (Cao et al. 2014)

About the journal

Full journal title	Practice Periodical on Structural Design and Construction
ISSN (print)	1084-0680
ISSN (online)	1943-5576
Scope	Arts and Humanities (miscellaneous) Civil and Structural Engineering Building and Construction