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

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

Ivins, E. R. 2009. “Ocean Science. Ice Sheet Stability and Sea Level.” Science (New York, N.Y.), 324(5929): 888–889.

A journal article with 2 authors

Falk, A. and N. Szech. 2013. “Morals and Markets.” Science (New York, N.Y.), 340(6133): 707–711.

A journal article with 3 authors

Haitin, Y., A. E. Carlson, and W. N. Zagotta. 2013. “The Structural Mechanism of KCNH-Channel Regulation by the Eag Domain.” Nature, 501(7467): 444–448.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Barnea, G., S. O’Donnell, F. Mancia, X. Sun, A. Nemes, M. Mendelsohn, and R. Axel. 2004. “Odorant Receptors on Axon Termini in the Brain.” Science (New York, N.Y.), 304(5676): 1468.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Pesavento, L. and S. Smoleny. 2015. A Trader’s Guide to Financial Astrology, Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

An edited book

Mick, G. and V. Guastella eds. 2014. Chronic Postsurgical Pain, Cham: Springer International Publishing.

A chapter in an edited book

Imbellone, A., B. Botte, and C. M. Medaglia. 2015. “Intouch: Mobile Game-Based Learning for Non Routine Skills.” In Games and Learning Alliance: Third International Conference, GALA 2014, Bucharest, Romania, July 2-4, 2014, Revised Selected Papers, edited by A. De Gloria, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, pp. 44–53. Cham: Springer International Publishing.

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 Research.

Blog post

Andrew, E. 2015. “Stories From The Sky: Astronomy In Indigenous Knowledge,” IFLScience, IFLScience [accessed on October 30, 2018]. Available at: https://www.iflscience.com/space/stories-sky-astronomy-indigenous-knowledge/.

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. 1991. “Telecommunications: 1991 Survey of Cable Television Rates and Services,” T-RCED-91-82, Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Gowetski, D. B. 2012. Manipulation of DNA Topology Using an Artificial DNA-Looping Protein. Doctoral dissertation. College Park, MD: University of Maryland, College Park.

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

Greenhouse, L. 2007. “Ruling Seen as Giving an Edge to Challengers of Patents.” New York Times: C3.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Ivins 2009).
This sentence cites two references (Ivins 2009; Falk and Szech 2013).

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

Two authors: (Falk and Szech 2013)
Three authors: (Haitin, Carlson, and Zagotta 2013)
4 or more authors: (Barnea et al. 2004)

About the journal

Full journal title	Health Services Research
Abbreviation	Health Serv. Res.
ISSN (print)	0017-9124
ISSN (online)	1475-6773
Scope	Health Policy