How to format your references using the Contemporary Clinical Trials citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Contemporary Clinical Trials. 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	Download the output style file
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

[1]

P. Janvier, Facts and fancies about early fossil chordates and vertebrates, Nature 520 (2015) 483–489.

A journal article with 2 authors

[1]

L. Chudinovskikh, R. Boehler, High-pressure polymorphs of olivine and the 660-km seismic discontinuity, Nature 411 (2001) 574–577.

A journal article with 3 authors

[1]

J.W. Reiner, F.J. Walker, C.H. Ahn, Materials science. Atomically engineered oxide interfaces, Science 323 (2009) 1018–1019.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

[1]

G.M. Yogodzinski, J.M. Lees, T.G. Churikova, F. Dorendorf, G. Wöerner, O.N. Volynets, Geochemical evidence for the melting of subducting oceanic lithosphere at plate edges, Nature 409 (2001) 500–504.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

[1]

R. Zito, Electrochemical Water Processing, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ, 2011.

An edited book

[1]

J. Camenisch, S. Fischer-Hübner, K. Rannenberg, eds., Privacy and Identity Management for Life, Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, 2011.

A chapter in an edited book

[1]

K. Xu, S. Terakawa, Myelin Sheath with a New Type of Fine Structure Found in the Nervous System of Penaeus Shrimp, an Invertebrate, in: S. Terakawa (Ed.), Myelinated Fibers and Saltatory Conduction in the Shrimp: The Fastest Impulse Conduction in the Animal Kingdom, Springer Japan, Tokyo, 2013: pp. 35–45.

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 Clinical Trials.

Blog post

[1]

E. Andrew, Researchers Observe Social Spread Of New Behaviors In Chimps, IFLScience (2014). https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/researchers-observe-social-spread-new-behaviors-chimps/ (accessed October 30, 2018).

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, Space Acquisitions: Government and Industry Partners Face Substantial Challenges in Developing New DOD Space Systems, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC, 2009.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

[1]

R.P. Kamis, The Relationship between Expanded Concepts of Self and Well-Being, Doctoral dissertation, Northcentral University, 2013.

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]

G.G. Gustines, Leaping From Marvel to DC in a Single Bound, New York Times (2014) C3.

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	Contemporary Clinical Trials
Abbreviation	Contemp. Clin. Trials
ISSN (print)	1551-7144
Scope	General Medicine Pharmacology (medical)