How to format your references using the Reliability Engineering and System Safety citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Reliability Engineering and System Safety. 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]

Hamer D. Genetics. Rethinking behavior genetics. Science 2002;298:71–2.

A journal article with 2 authors

[1]

Xu Y, Chun MM. Dissociable neural mechanisms supporting visual short-term memory for objects. Nature 2006;440:91–5.

A journal article with 3 authors

[1]

Weisz C, Glowatzki E, Fuchs P. The postsynaptic function of type II cochlear afferents. Nature 2009;461:1126–9.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

[1]

Fox AR, Bart SC, Meyer K, Cummins CC. Towards uranium catalysts. Nature 2008;455:341–9.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

[1]

Maloberti F. Understanding Microelectronics. Chichester, West Sussex, United Kingdom: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.; 2011.

An edited book

[1]

Meeks S. The Past and Future City: How Historic Preservation Is Reviving America’s Communities. Washington, DC: Island Press/Center for Resource Economics; 2016.

A chapter in an edited book

[1]

Friberg T, Labriola L. Wide-Field Imaging and Angiography. In: Holz FG, Spaide R, editors. Medical Retina: Focus on Retinal Imaging, Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer; 2010, p. 27–40.

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 Reliability Engineering and System Safety.

Blog post

[1]

Hamilton K. Health Check: What Controls Our Sex Drive? When And Why Do We Feel Like Sex? IFLScience 2016. https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/health-check-what-controls-our-sex-drive-when-and-why-do-we-feel-like-sex/ (accessed October 30, 2018).

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. Information on Federally Owned Land in Oregon Set Aside for Use by the Burns Paiute Indian Colony. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 1972.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

[1]

Ivy R. Regional Subsurface Investigation of the Uppermost Cretaceous of Northern Louisiana. Doctoral dissertation. University of Louisiana, 2017.

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]

Kounios J. Eureka? Yes, Eureka! New York Times 2017:SR6.

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	Reliability Engineering and System Safety
Abbreviation	Reliab. Eng. Syst. Saf.
ISSN (print)	0951-8320
Scope	Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering Safety, Risk, Reliability and Quality