How to format your references using the Health Services and Outcomes Research Methodology citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Health Services and Outcomes Research Methodology. 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

Masood, E.: Maurice Strong (1929-2015). Nature. 528, 480 (2015)

A journal article with 2 authors

Romanov-Michailidis, F., Rovis, T.: Organic chemistry: Natural polarity inverted. Nature. 523, 417–418 (2015)

A journal article with 3 authors

Marangon, D.G., Vallone, G., Villoresi, P.: Random bits, true and unbiased, from atmospheric turbulence. Sci. Rep. 4, 5490 (2014)

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Lever, C., Wills, T., Cacucci, F., Burgess, N., O’Keefe, J.: Long-term plasticity in hippocampal place-cell representation of environmental geometry. Nature. 416, 90–94 (2002)

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Halbich, I.W.: Cape Fold Belt‐Agulhas Bank Transect Across Gondwana Suture, Southern Africa. American Geophysical Union, Washington, D. C. (1993)

An edited book

Ahsanullah, M.: Normal and Student´s t Distributions and Their Applications. Atlantis Press, Paris (2014)

A chapter in an edited book

Canter, D.J., Pietzak, E.J., Guzzo, T.J.: Perioperative Care of the Geriatric Urology Patient. In: Guzzo, T.J., Drach, G.W., and Wein, A.J. (eds.) Primer of Geriatric Urology. pp. 43–63. Springer, New York, NY (2016)

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 Services and Outcomes Research Methodology.

Blog post

Davis, J.: Sharks’ Ability To Hunt Could Be Altered Under Climate Change, https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/sharks-ability-hunt-could-be-altered-under-climate-change/

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

Government Accountability Office: Information Technology: OMB Needs to Improve Its Guidance on IT Investments. U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC (2011)

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Tubbs, M.A.: The use of hand-constructed graphs in Microcomputer-Based Laboratories for kinematics instruction, (2014)

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

Wagner, J.: Cubs Open Title Defense With a One-Two Punch by Bryant and Rizzo, (2017)

In-text citations

References should be cited in the text by name and year in parentheses:

This sentence cites one reference (Masood 2015).
This sentence cites two references (Masood 2015; Romanov-Michailidis and Rovis 2015).

Here are examples of in-text citations with multiple authors:

Two authors: (Romanov-Michailidis and Rovis 2015)
Three or more authors: (Lever et al. 2002)

About the journal

Full journal title	Health Services and Outcomes Research Methodology
Abbreviation	Health Serv. Outcomes Res. Methodol.
ISSN (print)	1387-3741
ISSN (online)	1572-9400
Scope	Health Policy Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health