Citations to the literature usually contain 5 elements:
- Author(s) of the work
- Title of the work
- Source of the work
- For books, the source is the publisher
- For journal articles, the source is the journal name
- Location
- For books, the location is the city where the publisher is headquartered
- For journal articles, the location is the volume number, issue number and pages of the article within the journal AND/OR the "doi" (the digital object identifier)
- Date
How these elements are arranged, what punctuation and/or spacing is used between the elements, when to capitalize words, and what font style to use (regular, bold, italic, etc.) depends on the "Citation Style". There are many types of citation styles, some are general and can be used in many situations while others are specific to an individual journal or a society's publications. The field of engineering as a whole does not favor any particular style but some subfields have a preferred style (ex. in electrical engineering IEEE Style is frequently used). When writing for a class assignment, ask your instructor what is his/her preferred citation style.
The following citation examples are written in APA (American Psychological Association) Style, a general and very commonly used style that works well for many engineering fields. Can you pick out the five elements in each of these citation examples?
Citations for Books:
- Shepherd, R., Frost, J. D. (1995) Failures in civil engineering: Structural, foundation, and geoenvironmental case studies. New York: American Society of Civil Engineers.
- Blockley, D. (2010) Bridges: the Science and Art of the World's Most Inspiring Structures. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Citations for Journal Articles:
- Plaut, R. H. (2008) Snap Loads and Torsional Oscillations of the Original Tacoma Narrows Bridge. Journal of Sound and Vibration, 309(3), 613-636. doi: 10.1016/j.jsv.2007.07.057
- Arioli, G., Gazzola, F. (2015). A new mathematical explanation of what triggered the catastrophic torsional mode of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge. Applied Mathematical Modelling, 39(2), 901-912. doi:10.1016/j.apm.2014.06.022