How to format your references using the Precision Engineering citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Precision 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

[1]

Canup RM. Origin of Saturn’s rings and inner moons by mass removal from a lost Titan-sized satellite. Nature 2010;468:943–6.

A journal article with 2 authors

[1]

Zitvogel L, Kroemer G. CANCER. A p53-regulated immune checkpoint relevant to cancer. Science 2015;349:476–7.

A journal article with 3 authors

[1]

Alves JF, Lada CJ, Lada EA. Internal structure of a cold dark molecular cloud inferred from the extinction of background starlight. Nature 2001;409:159–61.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

[1]

Zheng Y, Lay T, Flanagan MP, Williams Q. Pervasive seismic wave reflectivity and metasomatism of the Tonga mantle wedge. Science 2007;316:855–9.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

[1]

Khan MM, Islam MR. Zero Waste Engineering. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.; 2016.

An edited book

[1]

Hall JC, Hall BJ, editors. Cutaneous Drug Eruptions: Diagnosis, Histopathology and Therapy. London: Springer; 2015.

A chapter in an edited book

[1]

Davies A, Saifuddin A. Ultrasonography. In: Davies AM, Sundaram M, James SLJ, editors. Imaging of Bone Tumors and Tumor-Like Lesions: Techniques and Applications, Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer; 2009, p. 85–93.

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 Precision Engineering.

Blog post

[1]

O`Callaghan J. Giant Floating Airship Takes Flight In The UK For The First Time. IFLScience 2016.

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

[1]

Government Accountability Office. GSA’s Effort to Develop Year 2000 Business Continuity and Contingency Plans for Telecommunications Systems. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 1999.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

[1]

Parisi J. Correlation of Conditional Admittance and Student Achievement in an Undergraduate Higher Education Setting. Doctoral dissertation. Lindenwood University, 2012.

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

[1]

Kenigsberg B. The Nuptials Are Set. The Groom? TBD. New York Times 2017:C8.

In-text citations

References should be cited in the text by sequential numbers in square brackets:

This sentence cites one reference [1].
This sentence cites two references [1,2].
This sentence cites four references [1–4].

About the journal

Full journal title	Precision Engineering
Abbreviation	Precis. Eng.
ISSN (print)	0141-6359
Scope	General Engineering