Purdue OWL (Online Writing Lab)
The Online Writing Lab (OWL) at Purdue University houses writing resources and instructional material, and we provide these as a free service of the Writing Lab at Purdue. Students, members of the community, and users worldwide will find information to assist with many writing projects.
Citing Your Sources
Proper citation is essential. Citing properly allows your reader or audience to locate the materials you have used. Citations give credit to the authors of quoted or consulted information. For detailed instructions on how to cite within the text of your paper, please consult a style manual listed below.
BU Librarians recommend 
RefWorks as the best tool to manage citations. Accounts are free for the BU community. RefWorks can automatically create a bibliography in hundreds of styles. Here are some other popular options:
- Mendeley a free reference manager and PDF organizer.
- Zotero a free, web browser-based toll that allows you to collect, organize, annotate, cite, and share research.
- Quick Bibliography Generators
- Research Guide: Create Bibliographies
Some Engineering Publication Styles/Author Guidelines
Most Engineering Societies and many journals have Instructions for Author or Author Guidelines on their websites and in their publications.
IEEE EDITORIAL STYLE MANUAL- Citation style guidelines from the Institute for Electrical and Electronics Engineers
ASME: References Citation style for Mechanical Engineering from the American Society for Mechanical Engineers
Communications of the ACM: Author Guidelines Citation style for computer science and computer engineering from the Association for Computing Machinery
CSE (Council of Science Editors) Style
Citing Your Sources: CSE (Council of Science Editors) Style
Style Manual Committee, Council of Science Editors.
8th ed. Cambridge University Press, 2014
Location: Science & Engineering Library T11.S386 2014
See Chapter 30: Citations and References pages 617-676
Citing electronic sources pages 665-669
