How to format your references using the Clinical Chemistry citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Clinical Chemistry. For a complete guide how to prepare your manuscript refer to the journal's instructions to authors.

Using reference management software

Typically you don't format your citations and bibliography by hand. The easiest way is to use a reference manager:

Paperpile	The citation style is built in and you can choose it in Settings > Citation Style or Paperpile > Citation Style in Google Docs.
EndNote	Download the output style file
Mendeley, Zotero, Papers, and others	The style is either built in or you can download a CSL file that is supported by most references management programs.
BibTeX	BibTeX syles are usually part of a LaTeX template. Check the instructions to authors if the publisher offers a LaTeX template for this journal.

Journal articles

Those examples are references to articles in scholarly journals and how they are supposed to appear in your bibliography.

Not all journals organize their published articles in volumes and issues, so these fields are optional. Some electronic journals do not provide a page range, but instead list an article identifier. In a case like this it's safe to use the article identifier instead of the page range.

A journal article with 1 author

Fender RP. ASTRONOMY: A New Source of Gamma Rays. Science. 2000;288:2326.

A journal article with 2 authors

Mitchell-Olds T, Schmitt J. Genetic mechanisms and evolutionary significance of natural variation in Arabidopsis. Nature. 2006;441:947–52.

A journal article with 3 authors

Hurrell JW, Kushnir Y, Visbeck M. Climate. The North Atlantic oscillation. Science. 2001;291:603–5.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Lu C, Hu X, Yang H, Gong Q. Integrated all-optical logic discriminators based on plasmonic bandgap engineering. Sci Rep. 2013;3:2778.

Books and book chapters

Here are examples of references for authored and edited books as well as book chapters.

An authored book

Mead JM, Gruneberg S. Programme Procurement in Construction. Oxford, UK: Wiley-Blackwell; 2013.

An edited book

Turcan RV, Reilly JE, Bugaian L, editors. (Re)Discovering University Autonomy: The Global Market Paradox of Stakeholder and Educational Values in Higher Education. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan US; 2016.

A chapter in an edited book

Jespers E, Okniński J. Algebras of submonoids of polycyclic-by-finite groups. In: Okniński J, editor. Noetherian Semigroup Algebras. Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands; 2007. page 63–115.

Web sites

Sometimes references to web sites should appear directly in the text rather than in the bibliography. Refer to the Instructions to authors for Clinical Chemistry.

Blog post

Luntz S. New Element Confirmed [Internet]. IFLScience. IFLScience; 2014 [cited 2018 Oct 30]. Available from: https://www.iflscience.com/chemistry/new-element-confirmed/

Reports

This example shows the general structure used for government reports, technical reports, and scientific reports. If you can't locate the report number then it might be better to cite the report as a book. For reports it is usually not individual people that are credited as authors, but a governmental department or agency like "U. S. Food and Drug Administration" or "National Cancer Institute".

Government report

Government Accountability Office. Army Aviation Requirements. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 1995 Dec. Report No.: NSIAD-96-81R.

Theses and dissertations

Theses including Ph.D. dissertations, Master's theses or Bachelor theses follow the basic format outlined below.

Doctoral dissertation

LaPoint JL. The effects of aviation -based error management training on perioperative safety attitudes [Doctoral dissertation]. [Phoenix, AZ]: University of Phoenix; 2008.

News paper articles

Unlike scholarly journals, news papers do not usually have a volume and issue number. Instead, the full date and page number is required for a correct reference.

New York Times article

Greenhouse L. One Man, Two Courts. New York Times. 2010;WK11.

In-text citations

References should be cited in the text by sequential numbers in parentheses:

This sentence cites one reference (1).
This sentence cites two references (1,2).
This sentence cites four references (1–4).

About the journal

Full journal title	Clinical Chemistry
Abbreviation	Clin. Chem.
ISSN (print)	0009-9147
ISSN (online)	1530-8561
Scope	Clinical Biochemistry Biochemistry, medical

Research and Writing Guides