How to format your references using the Health and Quality of Life Outcomes citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Health and Quality of Life Outcomes. 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. Clayton J. RNA interference: the silent treatment. Nature. 2004;431:599–605.

A journal article with 2 authors

1. Barrangou R, Klaenhammer TR. Microbiology: Bacteria get vaccinated. Nature. 2014;513:175–6.

A journal article with 3 authors

1. Mora C, Danovaro R, Loreau M. Alternative hypotheses to explain why biodiversity-ecosystem functioning relationships are concave-up in some natural ecosystems but concave-down in manipulative experiments. Sci Rep. 2014;4:5427.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

1. Farroni T, Chiarelli AM, Lloyd-Fox S, Massaccesi S, Merla A, Di Gangi V, et al. Infant cortex responds to other humans from shortly after birth. Sci Rep. 2013;3:2851.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

1. Akers RM. Lactation and the Mammary Gland. Ames, Iowa: Blackwell Publishing Company; 2016.

An edited book

1. Brüntje D, Gajda O, editors. Crowdfunding in Europe: State of the Art in Theory and Practice. 1st ed. 2016. Cham: Springer International Publishing; 2016.

A chapter in an edited book

1. Berkel G. Contract Management. In: Kleinaltenkamp M, Plinke W, Geiger I, editors. Business Project Management and Marketing: Mastering Business Markets. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer; 2016. p. 159–206.

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 Health and Quality of Life Outcomes.

Blog post

1. Davis J. Global Coral Bleaching Event Declared. IFLScience. 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. Space Exploration: NASA’s Deep Space Missions Are Experiencing Long Delays. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 1988 May. Report No.: NSIAD-88-128BR.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

1. Olson CR. Population genetic structure of two abyssal grenadiers of the north Atlantic and northeastern Pacific oceans [Doctoral dissertation]. [Long Beach, CA]: California State University, Long Beach; 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. Chira S. These Guys Really Like Trump. New York Times. 2017 Apr 29;SR6.

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	Health and Quality of Life Outcomes
Abbreviation	Health Qual. Life Outcomes
ISSN (online)	1477-7525
Scope	General Medicine Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health