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

Pace NR. Time for a change. Nature. 441(7091), 289 (2006).

A journal article with 2 authors

Fitzgerald KA, Golenbock DT. Immunology. The shape of things to come. Science. 316(5831), 1574–1576 (2007).

A journal article with 3 authors

Shen P-C, Lin M-S, Lin C-F. Environmentally benign technology for efficient warm-white light emission. Sci. Rep. 4, 5307 (2014).

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Song MS, Salmena L, Carracedo A, et al. The deubiquitinylation and localization of PTEN are regulated by a HAUSP-PML network. Nature. 455(7214), 813–817 (2008).

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Heads G. Living Mindfully. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, Chichester, UK.

An edited book

Fischer X. Research in Interactive Design: Proceedings of Virtual Concept 2005. Springer, Paris.

A chapter in an edited book

Notari MP, Hielscher M, King M. Educational Apps Ontology. In: Mobile Learning Design: Theories and Application. Churchill D, Lu J, Chiu TKF, Fox B (Eds.), Springer, Singapore, 83–96 (2016).

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

Carpineti A. New Asteroid Is Orbiting Jupiter And The Sun The Wrong Way Around [Internet]. IFLScience (2017). Available from: https://www.iflscience.com/space/new-asteroid-is-orbiting-jupiter-and-the-sun-the-wrong-way-around/.

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. Information Technology: Census Bureau Testing of 2010 Decennial Systems Can Be Strengthened. 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

Williams K. Riot Bias: A Textual Analysis of Pussy Riot’s Coverage in Russian and American Media. (2014).

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

Sisario B. Shania Twain Returns To Top of Album Chart. New York Times, C3 (2017).

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