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]

P. Smaglik, “Sizing up the odds,” Nature, vol. 434, no. 7033, p. 675, Mar. 2005.

A journal article with 2 authors

[1]

H. Fu and R. E. Cohen, “Polarization rotation mechanism for ultrahigh electromechanical response in single-crystal piezoelectrics,” Nature, vol. 403, no. 6767, pp. 281–283, Jan. 2000.

A journal article with 3 authors

[1]

D. L. Dixson, D. Abrego, and M. E. Hay, “Reef ecology. Chemically mediated behavior of recruiting corals and fishes: a tipping point that may limit reef recovery,” Science, vol. 345, no. 6199, pp. 892–897, Aug. 2014.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

[1]

T. Hanaguri, Y. Kohsaka, M. Ono, et al., “Coherence factors in a high-tc cuprate probed by quasi-particle scattering off vortices,” Science, vol. 323, no. 5916, pp. 923–926, Feb. 2009.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

[1]

A. A. Bruen and M. A. Forcinito, Cryptography, Information Theory, and Error-Correction. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2004.

An edited book

[1]

A. Abraham, A.-E. Hassanien, and V. Sná¿el, Eds., Computational Social Network Analysis: Trends, Tools and Research Advances. London: Springer, 2010.

A chapter in an edited book

[1]

S. Karra, M. Jelali, M. N. Karim, and A. Horch, “Detection of Oscillating Control Loops,” in Detection and Diagnosis of Stiction in Control Loops: State of the Art and Advanced Methods, M. Jelali and B. Huang, Eds. London: Springer, 2010, pp. 61–100.

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]

A. Carpineti, “The Sky Is Alive With The Sound Of Stars,” IFLScience, 07-Jun-2016. [Online]. Available: https://www.iflscience.com/space/the-sky-is-alive-with-the-sound-of-stars/. [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, “Close Air Support: Principal Issues and Aircraft Choices,” U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC, B-173850, Dec. 1971.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

[1]

C. Oppenheimer, “Use of bibliotherapy as an adjunctive therapy with bereaved children: A grant proposal,” Doctoral dissertation, California State University, Long Beach, Long Beach, CA, 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

[1]

T. Rao, “Cool Ranch,” New York Times, p. MM30, 25-Aug-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

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