You\u2019ve completed your mechanical engineering study or robotics engineering research, and the results are all you hoped they would be. You believe your study will make an important contribution to your field. However, this will mean nothing if nobody knows about it. You need to publish your work. This article will provide you with some resources to help you prepare your research manuscript according to publishing standards.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Whether you are a researcher in electrical, civil, industrial, or any other engineering discipline, many types of writing resources are available to help you get your research published and communicated to your target audience. These resources include style guides, university-based academic-writing resources, and subject-specific resources for researchers in engineering fields. The most well-known of these resources are style guides.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Style guides are documents that provide guidelines for language and grammar along with formats and references and are designed to ensure document consistency. They specify how a document should look, from font size and type to section headings and citation formats. According to the Purdue University Online Writing Center, \u201cstyle guides are used as a way of making common elements consistent across documents written by many writers, in many places, and in many circumstances1<\/sup>.\u201d Researchers looking to publish their manuscript must adhere to the style guide required by their target journal. Some academic journals do not follow a specific style guide but have their own requirements. For example, electrical engineering research articles are often required to follow the guidelines of The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), and mechanical engineering research articles frequently follow those of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME). Therefore, it is essential to identify your target journal and follow the author guidelines provided by that journal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n University-based academic-writing resources are also available to help researchers produce publishable manuscripts. These can provide researchers with a deeper understanding of the style guides, help with more basic information, such as grammar and language, or provide technical writing tips. Finally, subject-specific resources are available related to mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, and other engineering disciplines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n During your professional career, you will frequently see references to various style guides, and you will read articles in many different formats. Although you will need to follow your target journal\u2019s guidelines for formatting and citations when you publish your work, as engineering researchers, you should become familiar with the following frequently used style guides.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Listed below are several more general academic writing resources that will be useful for engineering researchers when communicating or publishing the results of their work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Becoming familiar with using these and other available resources will help you follow the appropriate style and make the publishing process much smoother, thus allowing you to publish your engineering manuscript and effectively communicate your results to researchers and other interested parties for the benefit of all. And if you need expert support, Editage’s experienced editors<\/a><\/strong> can help you prepare your manuscript for journal submission.<\/p>\n\n\n\n References<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nCitation Style Guide<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Published by the American Psychological Association2<\/sup>, this style guide is traditionally used by researchers in the behavioral sciences and business but is also common in other disciplines such as civil engineering, industrial engineering, structural engineering, and manufacturing engineering. The current (7th<\/sup>) edition of the APA manual is all encompassing and provides guidelines for all aspects of a manuscript, including formatting and reference and citation styles.
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Published by the University of Chicago Press3<\/sup>, this style guide is commonly used by history researchers and occasionally by humanities and science researchers. Industrial engineering researchers sometimes make use of this style, and the Chicago citation style is used by several discipline-specific associations, such as ASME and IEEE.
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Once you identify your target journal, it is vital that you follow the publication guidelines specific to that journal. You can find those requirements on the journal\u2019s homepage. The following are short descriptions of the style guides used by some of the most popular engineering journals.
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Published by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers4<\/sup>, this is the guide used predominantly by mechanical engineering researchers to write articles for publication in the association\u2019s journals. While these guidelines specify requirements such as document formatting and submission procedures, the manual primarily uses the Chicago Manual of Style for formatting citations and references.
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Published by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers5<\/sup>, this resource must be used for submissions to any IEEE journal. This format will be used mostly by electrical engineering, telecommunication engineering, and robotics engineering researchers and occasionally by civil and structural engineering researchers. Although almost all the style information is included in the online resources, the manual also refers other issues to the Chicago Manual of Style.
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Guidelines for publishing in ASCE journals can be found online6<\/sup> and include document, reference, and citation formatting requirements as well as comprehensive information on types of manuscripts accepted and submission requirements. The complete author\u2019s guide is available online as a PDF file. ASCE journals are especially relevant for civil engineering researchers.
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