How to format your references using the Comparative Effectiveness Research citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Comparative Effectiveness Research. 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	Find the style here: output styles overview
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

Wine JJ. Medicine. Letting go of mucus. Science. 345(6198), 730–731 (2014).

A journal article with 2 authors

O’Connell LA, Hofmann HA. Evolution of a vertebrate social decision-making network. Science. 336(6085), 1154–1157 (2012).

A journal article with 3 authors

Prahlad V, Pilgrim D, Goodwin EB. Roles for mating and environment in C. elegans sex determination. Science. 302(5647), 1046–1049 (2003).

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Datta SR, Vasconcelos ML, Ruta V, et al. The Drosophila pheromone cVA activates a sexually dimorphic neural circuit. Nature. 452(7186), 473–477 (2008).

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Gordon MJ Jr. Total Quality Process Control for Injection Molding. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ.

An edited book

Liu J, Wu J, Yao Y, Nishida T, editors. Active Media Technology: 5th International Conference, AMT 2009, Beijing, China, October 22-24, 2009. Proceedings. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg.

A chapter in an edited book

Makowsky J. Connection Matrices for MSOL-Definable Structural Invariants. In: Logic and Its Applications: Third Indian Conference, ICLA 2009, Chennai, India, January 7-11, 2009. Proceedings. Ramanujam R, Sarukkai S (Eds.), Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, 51–64 (2009).

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 Comparative Effectiveness Research.

Blog post

Davis J. Exxon Mobil Shareholders Pass Historic Climate Motion [Internet]. IFLScience (2017). Available from: https://www.iflscience.com/environment/exxon-mobil-shareholders-pass-historic-climate-motion/.

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. FAA Information Resources: Agency Needs to Correct Widespread Deficiencies. U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Jansson A. Stratigraphy, Landscape Evolution, and Past Environments at the Billy Big Spring Site, Montana. (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

Walsh MW. Shuttle’s End Leaves NASA A Pension Bill. New York Times, A1 (2011).

In-text citations

References should be cited in the text by sequential numbers in square brackets:

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	Comparative Effectiveness Research
Abbreviation	J. Comp. Eff. Res.
ISSN (print)	2042-6305
ISSN (online)	2042-6313
Scope	Health Policy