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:

PaperpileThe citation style is built in and you can choose it in Settings > Citation Style or Paperpile > Citation Style in Google Docs.
EndNoteDownload the output style file
Mendeley, Zotero, Papers, and othersThe style is either built in or you can download a CSL file that is supported by most references management programs.
BibTeXBibTeX 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
1.
Rodrigues ASL. Effective global conservation strategies. Nature. 2007;450:E19; author reply E20.
A journal article with 2 authors
1.
Partridge L, Gems D. Benchmarks for ageing studies. Nature. 2007;450:165–7.
A journal article with 3 authors
1.
Tritsch NX, Ding JB, Sabatini BL. Dopaminergic neurons inhibit striatal output through non-canonical release of GABA. Nature. 2012;490:262–6.
A journal article with 7 or more authors
1.
Rodríguez Martínez M del C, Ortíz Ceballos P, Coe MD, Diehl RA, Houston SD, Taube KA, et al. Oldest writing in the New World. Science. 2006;313:1610–4.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book
1.
Avlonas N, Nassos GP. Practical Sustainability Strategies. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc; 2013.
An edited book
1.
Youm HY, Yung M, editors. Information Security Applications: 10th International Workshop, WISA 2009, Busan, Korea, August 25-27, 2009, Revised Selected Papers. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer; 2009.
A chapter in an edited book
1.
Ahn S, Hong B. Reordering of Location Identifiers for Indexing an RFID Tag Object Database. In: Bhowmick SS, Küng J, Wagner R, editors. Database and Expert Systems Applications: 19th International Conference, DEXA 2008, Turin, Italy, September 1-5, 2008 Proceedings. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer; 2008. page 41–8.

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
1.
Davis J. Secret Meeting Of Scientists To Discuss Creating Synthetic Human Genome Fuels Speculation. IFLScience. IFLScience; 2016.

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
1.
Government Accountability Office. Aviation Safety: FAA Management Practices for Technical Training Mostly Effective; Further Actions Could Enhance Results. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 2005 Sep. Report No.: GAO-05-728.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation
1.
Wirtz Y. Strain Variation between the Monterey and Sisquoc Formations, Southern Santa Maria Basin, California, USA: Implications for Structural Assessment of Fold and Thrust Belts [Doctoral dissertation]. [Long Beach, CA]: California State University, Long Beach; 2017.

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
1.
Green LV. Beds of State. New York Times. 2006;1413.

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 titleClinical Chemistry
AbbreviationClin. Chem.
ISSN (print)0009-9147
ISSN (online)1530-8561
ScopeClinical Biochemistry
Biochemistry, medical

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