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

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Contemporary Clinical Trials Communications. 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

[1]

M. Grayson, Physics masterclass, Nature 490 (2012) S1.

A journal article with 2 authors

[1]

G.A. Bradshaw, B.L. Finlay, Natural symmetry, Nature 435 (2005) 149.

A journal article with 3 authors

[1]

T. Watanabe, J.E. Náñez, Y. Sasaki, Perceptual learning without perception, Nature 413 (2001) 844–848.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

[1]

R.S. Dhar, S.G. Razavipour, E. Dupont, C. Xu, S. Laframboise, Z. Wasilewski, Q. Hu, D. Ban, Direct nanoscale imaging of evolving electric field domains in quantum structures, Sci. Rep. 4 (2014) 7183.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

[1]

H. Kramer, Angewandte Baudynamik, Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim, Germany, 2013.

An edited book

[1]

T.-C. Wu, C.-L. Lei, V. Rijmen, D.-T. Lee, eds., Information Security: 11th International Conference, ISC 2008, Taipei, Taiwan, September 15-18, 2008. Proceedings, Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, 2008.

A chapter in an edited book

[1]

D.M. O’Hern, Y. Nozaki, Kenyan Education, in: Y. Nozaki (Ed.), Natural Science Education, Indigenous Knowledge, and Sustainable Development in Rural and Urban Schools in Kenya: Toward Critical Postcolonial Curriculum Policies and Practices, SensePublishers, Rotterdam, 2014: pp. 47–62.

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 Communications.

Blog post

[1]

E. Andrew, Scientists Use Physics To Read Scrolls From Herculaneum – But Why Do We Care?, IFLScience (2015).

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, Motor Vehicle Safety: Comprehensive State Programs Offer Best Opportunity for Increasing Use of Safety Belts, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC, 1996.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

[1]

T. Lim, Information-Theoretic Aspects of Signal Analysis and Reconstruction, Doctoral dissertation, University of California San Diego, 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

[1]

E. Palmer, J. Otis, Lifting Hope, With Global Reach, New York Times (2017) A19.

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 Communications
Abbreviation	Contemp. Clin. Trials Commun.
ISSN (print)	2451-8654
Scope