How to format your references using the Health Technology Assessment citation style

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

Estrada-Oyuela R. Copenhagen needs a strong lead negotiator. Nature 2009;461:1056–7.

A journal article with 2 authors

Vasquez CG, Martin AC. Cell biology: Death drags down the neighbourhood. Nature 2015;518:171–3.

A journal article with 3 authors

Colombo MG, Franzoni C, Rossi-Lamastra C. ENTREPRENEURSHIP. Cash from the crowd. Science 2015;348:1201–2.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Di Toro G, Hirose T, Nielsen S, Pennacchioni G, Shimamoto T. Natural and experimental evidence of melt lubrication of faults during earthquakes. Science 2006;311:647–9.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Brown SR, Gregory WM, Twelves C, Brown J. A Practical Guide to Designing Phase II Trials in Oncology. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd; 2014.

An edited book

Gershon E. Advanced Topics in Control and Estimation of State-Multiplicative Noisy Systems. vol. 439. London: Springer; 2013.

A chapter in an edited book

Frances C. The Dangerous Role of Economists in Shaping American Higher Education Policy. In: Pritchard RMO, Klumpp M, Teichler U, editors. Diversity and Excellence in Higher Education: Can the Challenges be Reconciled? Rotterdam: SensePublishers; 2015. p. 53–67.

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 Technology Assessment.

Blog post

Luntz S. #FieldworkFail Reveals The Hilarious Perils Of Science. IFLScience. IFLScience; 2015. URL: https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/fieldworkfail-reveals-perils-science/ (Accessed 30 October 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

Government Accountability Office. Greater Emphasis on Information Resource Management Is Needed at the Federal Aviation Administration. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 1982.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Jones JD. Parental attachment style: Links with parent and adolescent perceptions of parenting and observed secure base behaviors. Doctoral dissertation, College Park, MD: University of Maryland, College Park; 2013; 2013.

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

Billard M. Both Sides of the Border. New York Times 2010:E5.

In-text citations

References should be cited in the text by sequential numbers in superscript:

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 Technology Assessment
Abbreviation	Health Technol. Assess.
ISSN (print)	1366-5278
ISSN (online)	2046-4924
Scope	Health Policy