How to format your references using the Health Research Policy and Systems citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Health Research Policy and Systems. 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. Benner SA. Natural progression. Nature. 2001;409:459.

A journal article with 2 authors

1. Zeller D, Booth S. Costs and benefits of regulating mercury. Science. 2005;310:777–9; author reply 777-9.

A journal article with 3 authors

1. Rössler UK, Bogdanov AN, Pfleiderer C. Spontaneous skyrmion ground states in magnetic metals. Nature. 2006;442:797–801.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

1. Longo E, Cavalcante LS, Volanti DP, Gouveia AF, Longo VM, Varela JA, et al. Direct in situ observation of the electron-driven synthesis of Ag filaments on α-Ag2WO4 crystals. Sci Rep. 2013;3:1676.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

1. Lacalle D, Parrilla D. The Energy World is Flat. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd; 2015.

An edited book

1. Bica I, Reyhanitabar R, editors. Innovative Security Solutions for Information Technology and Communications: 9th International Conference, SECITC 2016, Bucharest, Romania, June 9-10, 2016, Revised Selected Papers. Cham: Springer International Publishing; 2016.

A chapter in an edited book

1. Berman LW. Geometric Constructions for Symmetric 6-Configurations. In: Connelly R, Ivić Weiss A, Whiteley W, editors. Rigidity and Symmetry. New York, NY: Springer; 2014. p. 61–85.

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 Research Policy and Systems.

Blog post

1. Andrews R. Study Suggests Free Will Is An Illusion [Internet]. IFLScience. IFLScience; 2016 [cited 2018 Oct 30]. Available from: https://www.iflscience.com/brain/free-will-may-be-more-illusion-we-previously-thought-claims-study/

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. Small Business Administration: Enhancements Needed for Loan Monitoring System Benchmark Study. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 1999 May. Report No.: AIMD-99-165.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

1. Fang L. Do media help deter financial misreporting? [Doctoral dissertation]. [Washington, DC]: George Washington University; 2015.

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. Vecsey G. Weather Doesn’t Dampen Latest Heart-Stopper in the Bronx. New York Times. 2009 Oct 18;SP3.

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 Research Policy and Systems
Abbreviation	Health Res. Policy Syst.
ISSN (online)	1478-4505
Scope	Health Policy