InfoGuides: American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) Citation Style: Citing Books and Book Chapters

Format of Books, Book Chapters, etc.

The author situation isn't always straightforward. Books can have

Authors
when exist, use the authors
Chapter authors and editors. when exist
- use chapter authors and editors or
- editors for whole book

You must have (or follow rules when it doesn't exist)

Title of the book
Year of Publication
City of Publication
Publisher Name

You need if it exists

Chapter title
Volume
Pages
DOI

Most book chapters will appear as follows in the reference list.

Last name, A. A., and B. B. Last name. Year. “Title of chapter in the book.” Ch. x in Book Title, edited by C. Last name, pp. xx-xx. City of Publisher, (only U.S. State): Abbrev. of Publisher. https://doi.org/DOI

If the majority of the book is used, cite the entire book without page numbers. Building codes and standards can be considered books. Standards should include the standard number. If not using a reference manager, treat reports like books while including the full institution name and location.

ACI (American Concrete Institute). 2022. Building code requirements for structural concrete and commentary. ACI 318-19(22). Farmington Hills, MI: ACI.

Cheng, S., T. Li, J. Wang, Z. Wei, Y. Jiang, K. Yu, B. Zhao, W. Wang, P. Hang, and G. Ke. 2022. "Flood control risk assessment on warping dam systems." Ch. 8 in Check Dam Construction for Sustainable Watershed Management and Planning, 177-187. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781119742449.ch8

Troubleshooting Zotero - Book Chapters

There are some issues with the ASCE Citation style for book chapters.

The word, in, is missing before the book title.
If you aren't submitting to an ASCE publication, this might be ok (ask your professor).
Zotero will abbreviate the book title.
This must be fixed. You can either:
- Cite the entire book.
- Fix your citations when you are completely done with the document (unlink citations).
- Fix the stylesheet using a CSL editor. There is one in Zotero, but it is kind of flaky.
A DOI or URL doesn't display even if you have one
Again, this might be ok (ask your professor).

For any document type that is a portion of a larger (e.g., book chapter)

Is there missing information that didn't import into your Zotero database?
Make sure that all the needed citation information is filled out in Zotero. The list of fields needed is on this webpage.
Is the book chapter title field not written in sentence case?
Sentence case is written as you would write a sentence.
Zotero doesn't detect proper nouns and acronyms, so it only forces the first letter of the first word to be in uppercase. Nothing is forced to lowercase. Be sure that the information in the title field appears exactly like it will in the reference.

Example Chapter Title

Incorrect

Air Handling Unit Shutdowns During Scheduled Unoccupied Hours: US Commercial Building Stock Prevalence and Energy Impact

Correct

Air handling unit shutdowns during scheduled unoccupied hours: US commercial building stock prevalence and energy impact