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Citation Guides for Engineers

American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE)

The ASCE style is used in all ASCE journals and follows a numbered citation system similar to IEEE. Sources are cited in-text using numerals in brackets, and full citations appear in the References list, in the order of appearance.

In-Text Citations

Use bracketed numbers to refer to sources:

  • Place citation after the referenced material.
  • If citing multiple sources, use a comma between brackets.

Examples:

  • Soil compaction reduces permeability [1].
  • Several models have been proposed [2], [3].

Reference List Formatting

List references numerically in the order they appear in the text (not alphabetically). All lines are flush left (no hanging indent).

The basic format is:

  • Author(s). Year. Title of book/article/report. Publisher or Journal, Volume(Issue), Page numbers. DOI (if available)

Common Examples

In-text: [2]

Reference:

2. Lopez, A., and Green, M. T. 2023. "Sustainable pavement technologies for urban roads." Proc., ASCE Int. Conf. on Transportation and Development, ASCE, Reston, VA, 457–464. https://doi.org/10.1061/9780784484998.045

In-text: [3]

Reference:

3. Das, B. M. 2019. Principles of geotechnical engineering. 9th ed., Cengage Learning, Boston.

In-text: [1]


Reference:

1. Smith, J. R., and Patel, T. K. 2021. "Analysis of shear forces in composite beams." J. Struct. Eng., 147(3), 04021012. https://doi.org/10.1061/(ASCE)ST.1943-541X.0002900

In-text: [6]


Reference:

6. Lee, S. H. 2018. Foundation system for offshore wind turbines. U.S. Patent No. 9,876,543.

In-text: [4]
 

Reference:

4. Federal Highway Administration (FHWA). 2020. National bridge inventory data for 2020. U.S. Dept. of Transportation, Washington, DC. https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/bridge/nbi/

In-text: [5]


Reference:

5. Chen, Y. 2022. Numerical modeling of wind loads on tall buildings. M.S. thesis, Dept. of Civil Engineering, Stanford Univ., Stanford, CA.

In-text: [7]


Reference:

7. American Concrete Institute (ACI). 2024. Design codes and standards. https://www.concrete.org/standards

NOTE: Include access dates only for content likely to change or without a clear publication date.

Tips

  • Use “and” (not “&”) between two authors.
  • For three or more authors, list only the first author followed by “et al.” in the in-text citation:
  • Example: [8] (if first author is Kumar)
  • Spell out full journal and conference names (no abbreviations).
  • Use italics only for journal and book titles.
  • Be consistent with punctuation and order in all references.
  • DOIs are strongly recommended for journal articles and proceedings.