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Chemical and Environmental Technology: Citing & Referencing

Introduction

The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Citing and Referencing Style is widely used in electrical, electronic and computing publications. IEEE provides instructions for citing and referencing various types of publications; including journals, magazines, newsletters, and standards.

IEEE is a numbered style with two components:

  1. In-Text Citations: Sources used are numbered in square brackets (e.g. [1]) in their order of appearance, within the body of work
  2. Reference List: Full references that include detailed information about the sources cited and used are listed at the end of the work. The reference list is numbered, and follows the same order as they are cited in-text (i.e. in order of appearance, not alphabetical order)

Further information can be found in IEEE's Documentation Style resource, and the IEEE Reference Guide.

In-Text Citations

Sources are numbered in the order in which they are first cited in the text. If the same source is cited later in the text, the same number is given:

'The theory was first put forward in 1987 [1].'

'Scholtz [2] has argued ... '

'Several recent studies [1], [3], [4], [10], [12] have suggested ... '

Author-Prominent vs. Information-Prominent:

How you structure your in-text citations depends on whether the sentence you have written is author-prominent, or information-prominent:

Author-Prominent:
'Hershey and Silio [3] imply this area is critical to functionality.'

Information-Prominent:
'This area is critical to functionality [3].'

Direct Quotations:

If you are quoting a source directly, include the specific page your quote appears:

'Experts agree this will have a broad impact, and will "require a monitoring and analysis scheme that supports global enterprise systems" [6, p. 118].'

Note: If a source you're quoting does not contain page numbers (e.g. a website), you will not be expected to apply a page number to your quotation.

Further information and examples can be found in the In-Text Citations, and Tables & Figures sections of this Guide.

Reference List

A numbered reference list should be placed at the end of your paper, arranged in the order the references appear in your text (i.e. not alphabetical author).

IEEE's Reference Style Guide (2025) contains detailed information about formatting different types of sources correctly in your reference list, including:

Many words and journal titles are abbreviated when you compile your reference list using the IEEE Style. You can find out more about these abbreviations in:

Further information and examples can be found in the Reference List, and Tables & Figures sections of this Guide.

Acknowledgement

BCIT Library acknowledges the unceded territories of the Coast Salish Nations of Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), səl̓ilwətaɁɬ (Tseil-Waututh), and xwməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam), on which our main campuses are located.

Learn whose unceded traditional lands your are on by visiting whose-land/en or native-land.ca