How to format your references using the Evidence-Based Complementary and Alternative Medicine citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Evidence-Based Complementary and Alternative Medicine. 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]

S. Smith, “Structural biology. Architectural options for a fatty acid synthase,” Science, vol. 311, no. 5765, pp. 1251–1252, Mar. 2006.

A journal article with 2 authors

[1]

G. Ekström and C. P. Stark, “Simple scaling of catastrophic landslide dynamics,” Science, vol. 339, no. 6126, pp. 1416–1419, Mar. 2013.

A journal article with 3 authors

[1]

M. J. Bennett, J. A. Lebrón, and P. J. Bjorkman, “Crystal structure of the hereditary haemochromatosis protein HFE complexed with transferrin receptor,” Nature, vol. 403, no. 6765, pp. 46–53, Jan. 2000.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

[1]

P. A. Williams, J. Cosme, D. M. Vinkovic, et al., “Crystal structures of human cytochrome P450 3A4 bound to metyrapone and progesterone,” Science, vol. 305, no. 5684, pp. 683–686, Jul. 2004.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

[1]

P. Valizadeh, Field Effect Transistors, A Comprehensive Overview. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc, 2016.

An edited book

[1]

V. V. Bellur, Ed., The 1980’s: A Decade of Marketing Challenges: Proceedings of the 1981 Academy of Marketing Science (AMS) Annual Conference. Cham: Springer International Publishing, 2015.

A chapter in an edited book

[1]

S.-I. Ao, “Hybrid Intelligent Regressions with Neural Network and Fuzzy Clustering,” in Advances in Computational Algorithms and Data Analysis, S.-I. Ao, B. Rieger, and S.-S. Chen, Eds. Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands, 2009, pp. 65–74.

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 Evidence-Based Complementary and Alternative Medicine.

Blog post

[1]

K. Hamilton, “We Have A Vaccine For Six Cancers; Why Are Less Than Half Of Kids Getting It?,” IFLScience, 22-Feb-2017. [Online]. Available: https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/we-have-a-vaccine-for-six-cancers-why-are-less-than-half-of-kids-getting-it/. [Accessed: 30-Oct-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, “Aviation Safety: Icing and Winter Weather-Related Recommendations That NTSB Has Issued Since 1996 (GAO-10-679SP), an E-supplement to (GAO-10-678),” U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC, GAO-10-679SP, Jul. 2010.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

[1]

K. D. Huffman, “Teacher and administrator perceptions of a balanced school calendar and its effects on students in poverty,” Doctoral dissertation, Lindenwood University, St. Charles, MO, 2009.

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]

M. J. O. White, “Don’t Slap Cuffs on the S.E.C,” New York Times, p. A27, 12-May-2016.

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	Evidence-Based Complementary and Alternative Medicine
Abbreviation	Evid. Based. Complement. Alternat. Med.
ISSN (print)	1741-427X
ISSN (online)	1741-4288
Scope	Complementary and alternative medicine