citation-formats

Citation Formats — Reference

Format references correctly and consistently for AEC/engineering venues. Always match the target venue's required style; when unknown, ask or default to the publisher's author guidelines. Never invent a DOI, author, year, or page range — if a detail is unknown, leave a clearly marked placeholder for the user to verify against the source.

1. Style selection by venue family

• ASCE journals → ASCE author–date style.
• Elsevier AEC journals (Automation in Construction, Energy and Buildings, etc.) → usually numbered (Elsevier "num" / Vancouver-like) or APA-like depending on journal — check the specific journal.
• IEEE venues → IEEE numbered.
• Taylor & Francis / Emerald (management venues) → often APA or Harvard.
• Springer → journal-specific (often a "Basic"/numbered or APA-like style).
• When in doubt, use the journal's downloadable EndNote/CSL style or BibTeX .bst file.

2. Quick patterns (journal article)

APA 7th (author–date): In-text: (Smith & Lee, 2021) or Smith and Lee (2021); 3+ authors → (Smith et al., 2021). Reference: Smith, A. B., & Lee, C. D. (2021). Title of the article in sentence case. Journal Name in Title Case, 12(3), 145–168. https://doi.org/10.xxxx/xxxx

IEEE (numbered): In-text: … as shown in [3]. Reference: [3] A. B. Smith and C. D. Lee, "Title of the article," Journal Name Abbrev., vol. 12, no. 3, pp. 145–168, 2021, doi: 10.xxxx/xxxx.

ASCE (author–date): In-text: (Smith and Lee 2021). Reference: Smith, A. B., and C. D. Lee. 2021. "Title of the article." J. Constr. Eng. Manage. 12 (3): 145–168. https://doi.org/10.xxxx/xxxx. (ASCE uses official journal abbreviations, issue in parentheses, colon before page range.)

Chicago author–date: Smith, Alan B., and Carol D. Lee. 2021. "Title of the Article." Journal Name 12 (3): 145–68.

Harvard (generic): Smith, A.B. and Lee, C.D. (2021) 'Title of the article', Journal Name, 12(3), pp. 145–168.

Vancouver/ICMJE (numbered): 1. Smith AB, Lee CD. Title of the article. Journal Name. 2021;12(3):145-68.

Differences that trip people up: case (APA/ASCE sentence-case article titles; Chicago/IEEE often title-case), author count cutoffs for "et al.", journal-name abbreviation (IEEE/ASCE/Vancouver abbreviate; APA spells out), DOI format (APA wants full https://doi.org/… URL).

3. Common source types (what fields you need)

• Journal article: authors, year, title, journal, volume, issue, pages, DOI.
• Conference paper (key in AEC): authors, year, title, proceedings/conference name, location, dates, publisher/organizer, pages or paper no. (e.g., ISARC, CIB W78, ASCE CRC).
• Book / chapter: authors/editors, year, title, edition, publisher, place, (chapter pages).
• Thesis: author, year, title, degree, institution.
• Standard: body + number + year + title (e.g., ISO 19650-1:2018) — see aec-standards-codes.
• Report / grey literature: organization as author, year, title, report no., publisher/URL.
• Dataset / software: author, year, title, version, repository/DOI (cite these — increasingly expected).
• Webpage: author/organization, year, title, URL, access date (only when no better source exists).

4. BibTeX / BibLaTeX

Common entry types: @article, @inproceedings/@conference, @book, @incollection, @phdthesis/ @mastersthesis, @techreport, @misc (datasets/software/standards), @online.

Example:

@article{smith2021digitaltwin,
  author  = {Smith, Alan B. and Lee, Carol D.},
  title   = {A digital twin framework for construction safety monitoring},
  journal = {Automation in Construction},
  year    = {2021},
  volume  = {12},
  number  = {3},
  pages   = {145--168},
  doi     = {10.1016/j.autcon.2021.xxxxx}
}
@inproceedings{lee2022vision,
  author    = {Lee, Carol D. and Park, Jin},
  title     = {Vision-based progress monitoring on modular sites},
  booktitle = {Proc. 39th Int. Symp. on Automation and Robotics in Construction (ISARC)},
  year      = {2022},
  pages     = {201--208},
  address   = {Bogot{\'a}, Colombia},
  doi       = {10.22260/ISARC2022/xxxx}
}

BibTeX hygiene: unique keys (authorYEARkeyword); protect capitals/acronyms with braces ({BIM}, {LCA}) so styles don't lowercase them; use -- for page ranges; keep DOIs bare (no URL prefix in the doi field); prefer @inproceedings over @misc for conference papers. (See /aec-scholar:bibtex.)

5. DOIs & identifiers

• Prefer DOIs over URLs (persistent). Format per style (APA: full URL; BibTeX: bare in doi).
• Other IDs: ISBN (books), ISSN (journals), ORCID (authors), arXiv ID (preprints), accession numbers.
• Resolve/verify a DOI at https://doi.org/<doi>. Never fabricate a DOI — omit and flag if unknown.

6. Reference managers (practical advice)

• Zotero (free, open, browser connector, great for web capture) · Mendeley · EndNote (institutional).
• Use a manager to: collect with one click, dedupe, attach PDFs, and auto-format via CSL styles; sync a group library for co-authors.
• For LaTeX: export BibTeX/BibLaTeX; for Word: use the manager's plugin + CSL style.
• Always proof the output — managers import dirty metadata (wrong case, missing issue, author-as-org errors). Trust but verify against the source.

7. Integrity guardrails (hard rules)

• Cite only sources you (or the user) have actually accessed and that exist.
• Don't pad reference lists or coercively self-cite.
• Preserve correct attribution; quote precisely with page numbers.
• When generating a reference from partial info, mark every uncertain field and instruct the user to verify on the publisher/DOI page. (See research-ethics-integrity.)