This paper takes the course of frontier in discipline of building environment and energy application engineering of China University of Mining and Technology as an example to introduce the basic situation of the course and the literature citation of students when completing the course paper. It analyzes the students’ emphasis on new literature based on the citation data in recent 3-5 years. By comparing the citation of Chinese and foreign literature, it points out that students do not pay enough attention to collecting the development status of international research when sorting out the papers. The possible reasons are given. Finally, the paper summarizes the references cited in the process of engineering college students’ thesis writing, and gives some suggestions.