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

Weinberg DH. Astronomy. Mapping the large-scale structure of the universe. Science. 309(5734), 564–565 (2005).

A journal article with 2 authors

Abbott LF, Regehr WG. Synaptic computation. Nature. 431(7010), 796–803 (2004).

A journal article with 3 authors

Pan B, Xiong Y, Steitz TA. How the CCA-adding enzyme selects adenine over cytosine at position 76 of tRNA. Science. 330(6006), 937–940 (2010).

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Bleul CC, Corbeaux T, Reuter A, Fisch P, Mönting JS, Boehm T. Formation of a functional thymus initiated by a postnatal epithelial progenitor cell. Nature. 441(7096), 992–996 (2006).

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Gallant BJ. Hazardous Waste Operations and Emergency Response Manual. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ.

An edited book

Cheng Y, Wang Q, Liu NC, editors. How World-Class Universities Affect Global Higher Education: Influences and Responses. SensePublishers, Rotterdam.

A chapter in an edited book

Bellazzi R. Information Technology Solutions for Diabetes management and prevention Current Challenges and Future Research directions. In: 11th Mediterranean Conference on Medical and Biomedical Engineering and Computing 2007: MEDICON 2007, 26-30 June 2007, Ljubljana, Slovenia. Jarm T, Kramar P, Zupanic A (Eds.), Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, 14–17 (2007).

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

Carpineti A. Incredible Ultraviolet View Of The Martian Atmosphere. IFLScience (2016).

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. Johnson Space Center Procurement: Controls Over Payments to Contractors Should Be Strengthened. 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

Sampson R. The effects of foster care on children: A comparison of 18th century through modern day foster care practices. (2010).

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

Ganz C, Leland J. Chris Cornell, Frontman for Soundgarden and Audioslave, Dies at 52. New York Times, B14 (2017).

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