Referencing Styles for Engineering Papers: Vancouver Explained

This engineering journal uses Vancouver style: references are numbered in the order they first appear in the text, up to six authors are listed in full, and seven or more become the first six followed by et al. Include the DOI wherever the source has one.

Reference formatting is the part of an engineering journal manuscript most often done at midnight before submission, and it is one of the easiest reasons to be sent back before review. It is also entirely mechanical, which means it can be got right every time.

Numbered, not alphabetical

This is the point that catches authors moving to an engineering journal from another style. In Vancouver, reference 1 is the first source you cite anywhere in the text — not the first alphabetically. Cite it again on page nine and it is still reference 1.

“Fatigue behaviour of welded joints has been studied extensively [1–3], though the effect of post-weld treatment remains disputed [4].”

A reference list sorted alphabetically is the giveaway that the manager was set to the wrong style. It looks tidy and it is wrong, and an editor spots it in two seconds.

The author rule

Surname first, then initials without full stops: Kumar A, Sharma RK, Patel M. Not A. Kumar, and not Kumar, A. The difference is small and it is the sort of thing a copy-editor will send back.

The common source types

Journal article

Al-Habian A, Harikumar PE, Stocker CJ, Langlands K, Selway JL. Histochemical evaluation of mouse skin histology. J Histotechnol. 2014 Dec;37(4):115-124.

Authors, title in sentence case, abbreviated journal name, year, month where given, volume, issue in brackets, page range.

Journal article with a DOI

Aho M, Irshad B, Ackerman SJ, Lewis M, Leddy R, Pope T, et al. Correlation of sonographic features with tumor grade. J Clin Ultrasound. 2013 Jan;41(1):10-7. DOI: 10.1002/jcu.21990

Seven authors, so six then et al., and the DOI at the end. Our guide on what a DOI is explains why that last element outlives every other part of the reference.

Book

Buckingham L. Molecular diagnostics: fundamentals, methods and clinical applications. 2nd ed. Philadelphia: F.A. Davis; c2012.

Chapter in an edited book

Altobelli N. Airway management. In: Kacmarek R, Stoller JK, Heuer AJ, editors. Fundamentals of respiratory care. 10th ed. St. Louis: Saunders Mosby; c2013. p. 732-86.

Standard or report on a web page

Give the issuing organisation as author, the title, the place and publisher, the year, and the access date with the URL. A standard cited without its designation and year is not citable — ASTM E8 and ASTM E8-22 are not the same document.

The Instructions to Author page gives worked examples for twenty-two source types, including theses, conference posters, streaming video and wiki entries.

Vancouver and IEEE are not the same

Both number in citation order, and both appear in engineering journal instructions, which is why people assume they are interchangeable. They are not:

Mixing them produces a list that is consistently wrong in a way that is obvious to anyone who works with either. Set your manager to one, and check.

What a reference list is actually for

It is easy to treat references as an administrative tax. They do three jobs, and knowing which helps you decide what to cite:

• They let a reader check you. Every claim you attribute to someone else should be traceable to it in one click.
• They place your work. The list shows which conversation your paper is joining, and reviewers read it for exactly that.
• They credit people. Including, occasionally, your own reviewers, which is a reason to be thorough rather than a reason to pad.

That third point leads to a bad habit worth naming: citation padding, where authors add references that are not used to make a list look substantial. Reviewers in a field can tell, because they know which papers actually bear on the problem.

How many references is right?

There is no number, and anyone quoting one is guessing. What matters is coverage: every claim attributed to prior work has a source, the recent literature is engaged with rather than merely listed, and nothing is cited that the paper does not use.

“References are outdated” is a common reviewer comment and it rarely means “add newer citations”. It means the paper does not show awareness of what has happened in the field recently. Adding five 2025 references to the introduction without discussing them does not fix it.

Five mistakes that cost time

Self-citation: how much is normal

Citing your own earlier work is legitimate and often necessary — you are building on it and the reader needs the foundation. Two limits are worth keeping in mind.

First, in a double-blind engineering journal, “as we showed previously [7]” identifies you immediately. Write “an earlier study [7] showed” instead: same citation, no signature.

Second, if a substantial share of the list is your own group and the papers are not doing real work in the argument, a reviewer will notice. Cite what the paper needs.

Using a reference manager without being betrayed by it

1. Set the output style to Vancouver before you start, not at the end.
2. Check every imported record. Managers import from databases, and databases carry errors — wrong page ranges, missing authors, titles in the wrong case.
3. Test every DOI. Paste each after https://doi.org/ and confirm it opens the paper you meant.
4. Read the final list by hand once, slowly. Fifteen minutes, and it catches what automation cannot.

A ten-minute reference check before submitting

1. Is the list numbered in citation order? Look at reference 1 and find it in the text — it should be the first citation.
2. Does every number in the text appear in the list, and the reverse? Search the manuscript for each.
3. Does every DOI resolve? Paste each after https://doi.org/ and watch it open.
4. Are author formats consistent? Surname then initials, no full stops, throughout.
5. Do standards carry their year?
6. Is anything cited that the paper does not use? Remove it.

Ten minutes, and it removes an entire category of copy-editing correspondence after acceptance.

One habit prevents most of this: build the reference list as you write, not afterwards. A list assembled in one session at the end is where duplicated entries, missing page ranges and mismatched numbering come from.

Frequently asked questions

What referencing style does this engineering journal use?

Vancouver style. References are numbered in the order they first appear in the text, not alphabetically, and the numbers are used in the text in place of author names.

How many authors do I list before using et al.?

Up to six authors are all listed. With seven or more, list the first six and then et al.

Do I need to include the DOI?

Include it where the source has one. It is the only part of a reference that keeps working after a publisher redesigns their site, and it lets a reader reach the paper in one click.

Is Vancouver the same as IEEE style?

No, though they look similar. Both number references in citation order, but the punctuation, author formatting and element order differ. Follow whichever the journal specifies, and do not mix them.

Can I use a reference manager?

Yes, and you should — but set it to a Vancouver output style and then check the result by hand. Reference managers import errors from databases and reproduce them faithfully.

Where do the numbers go in the text?

Where the source is used, in square brackets or superscript as the journal specifies, numbered in order of first appearance. A source cited again later keeps its original number.

Related Guides

The other formatting rules that go with referencing:

• Manuscript Checklist Before Submitting to an Engineering Journal
• How to Prepare Figures and Tables for an Engineering Journal
• How to Write the Methods Section of an Engineering Paper