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

Russell TP. Surface-responsive materials. Science. 297(5583), 964–967 (2002).

A journal article with 2 authors

Estrin D, Sim I. Health care delivery. Open mHealth architecture: an engine for health care innovation. Science. 330(6005), 759–760 (2010).

A journal article with 3 authors

Gehring M, Bubb KL, Henikoff S. Extensive demethylation of repetitive elements during seed development underlies gene imprinting. Science. 324(5933), 1447–1451 (2009).

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Hughes JF, Skaletsky H, Pyntikova T, et al. Chimpanzee and human Y chromosomes are remarkably divergent in structure and gene content. Nature. 463(7280), 536–539 (2010).

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Bobrow J, Kohn E, Mondragon-Gilmore J, Eggenschwiler J. CliffsNotes® Praxis I®: PPST®. Wiley Publishing, Inc., Hoboken, NJ.

An edited book

Snarskii AA. Transport Processes in Macroscopically Disordered Media: From Mean Field Theory to Percolation. Springer, New York, NY.

A chapter in an edited book

Rangiha ME, Comuzzi M, Karakostas B. Role and Task Recommendation and Social Tagging to Enable Social Business Process Management. In: Enterprise, Business-Process and Information Systems Modeling: 16th International Conference, BPMDS 2015, 20th International Conference, EMMSAD 2015, Held at CAiSE 2015, Stockholm, Sweden, June 8-9, 2015, Proceedings. Gaaloul K, Schmidt R, Nurcan S, Guerreiro S, Ma Q (Eds.), Springer International Publishing, Cham, 68–82 (2015).

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

Hamilton K. Bolivia’s Fast-Melting Glaciers Are Leaving Behind Lakes That Could Cause Catastrophic Floods [Internet]. IFLScience (2016). Available from: https://www.iflscience.com/environment/bolivias-fast-melting-glaciers-are-leaving-behind-lakes-that-could-cause-catastrophic-floods/.

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. Mass Transit Grants: Scarce Federal Funds Misused in UMTA’s Philadelphia Region. 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

Savvas C. Hydroclimate variability and landuse effects on nutrient export from watersheds in the mid-Atlantic United States. (2010).

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

MacFARQUHAR N. Bared Breast Enthralls Future Czar, and Stokes a Culture War. New York Times, A7 (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

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