How to format your references using the Journal of Comparative Effectiveness Research citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Journal of Comparative Effectiveness 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	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

Scully T. Demography: To the limit. Nature. 492(7427), S2-3 (2012).

A journal article with 2 authors

Chilingarian I, Zolotukhin I. Galaxy evolution. Isolated compact elliptical galaxies: stellar systems that ran away. Science. 348(6233), 418–421 (2015).

A journal article with 3 authors

de Forges BR, Koslow JA, Poore GC. Diversity and endemism of the benthic seamount fauna in the southwest Pacific. Nature. 405(6789), 944–947 (2000).

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Chien P, DePace AH, Collins SR, Weissman JS. Generation of prion transmission barriers by mutational control of amyloid conformations. Nature. 424(6951), 948–951 (2003).

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Douglas J, Noy EA. Building Surveys and Reports. Wiley-Blackwell, Oxford, UK.

An edited book

Ronan KR. Promoting Community Resilience in Disasters: The Role for Schools, Youth, and Families. Springer US, Boston, MA.

A chapter in an edited book

Wu C, Castell MR. Ultrathin Oxide Films on Au(111) Substrates. In: Oxide Materials at the Two-Dimensional Limit. Netzer FP, Fortunelli A (Eds.), Springer International Publishing, Cham, 149–168 (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 Journal of Comparative Effectiveness Research.

Blog post

Fang J. Protein That Can Edit Other Proteins Without DNA Blueprint Discovered [Internet]. IFLScience (2015). Available from: https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/protein-directs-protein-synthesis-without-dna-blueprint/.

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. Education Programs: Information on the Ed-Flex Demonstration Project. U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Ramotar-John BP. Supplementing soybean meal with Camelina (Camelina sativa) in tilapia diets and optimizing commercial tilapia diets for use in intensive systems in the Western region of the United States. (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

Kishkovsky S. Russia: Abortion Restrictions Signed. New York Times, A5 (2011).

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	Journal of Comparative Effectiveness Research
Abbreviation	J. Comp. Eff. Res.
ISSN (print)	2042-6305
ISSN (online)	2042-6313
Scope	Health Policy