How to format your references using the Contemporary Accounting Research citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Contemporary Accounting Research (CAR). 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
Haldeman, J. 2000. “Brochure. The apocalypse: a great day out for the whole family.” Nature 405 (6785): 401.
A journal article with 2 authors
Baker, A. W., and K. T. Forest. 2014. “Structural biology: Action at a distance in a light receptor.” Nature 509 (7499): 174–75.
A journal article with 3 authors
Culley, A. I., A. S. Lang, and C. A. Suttle. 2003. “High diversity of unknown picorna-like viruses in the sea.” Nature 424 (6952): 1054–57.
A journal article with 11 or more authors
Williams, P. A., J. Cosme, A. Ward, H. C. Angove, D. Matak Vinković, and H. Jhoti. 2003. “Crystal structure of human cytochrome P450 2C9 with bound warfarin.” Nature 424 (6947): 464–68.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book
Gerardi, M. H., and M. C. Zimmerman. 2004. Wastewater Pathogens. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
An edited book
Roose, J., and H. Dietz, eds. 2016. Social Theory and Social Movements: Mutual Inspirations. Wiesbaden: Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden.
A chapter in an edited book
Frosterus, M., E. Hyvönen, and J. Laitio. 2011. “Creating and Publishing Semantic Metadata about Linked and Open Datasets.” In Linking Government Data, edited by D. Wood, 95–112. New York, NY: Springer.

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 Contemporary Accounting Research.

Blog post
Hale, T. 2017. “Archaeologists Find 2,000-Year-Old Roman Tile Imprinted With A Perfect Cat Paw.” IFLScience. IFLScience, June 8, 2017, https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/archaeologists-find-2000yearold-roman-tile-imprinted-with-a-perfect-cat-paw/.

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. 1988. “The National Aero-Space Plane.” 137896. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation
Byrd, W. E. 2009. “Relational programming in miniKanren: Techniques, applications, and implementations.” Doctoral dissertation, Bloomington, IN: Indiana University.

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
Billard, M. 2010. “Picture This Bathing Suit.” New York Times, July 15, 2010.

In-text citations

References should be cited in the text by name and year in parentheses:

This sentence cites one reference (Haldeman 2000).
This sentence cites two references (Haldeman 2000; Baker and Forest 2014).

Here are examples of in-text citations with multiple authors:

  • Two authors: (Baker and Forest 2014)
  • Three or more authors: (Williams et al. 2003)

About the journal

Full journal titleContemporary Accounting Research
ISSN (online)1911-3846
Scope

Other styles