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

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for 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 reference managers.
BibTeX	BibTeX styles 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

Gilbert DM. Making sense of eukaryotic DNA replication origins. Science. 294(5540), 96–100 (2001).

A journal article with 2 authors

Boles MA, Talapin DV. Chemistry. Connecting the dots. Science. 344(6190), 1340–1341 (2014).

A journal article with 3 authors

Labrosse S, Hernlund JW, Coltice N. A crystallizing dense magma ocean at the base of the Earth’s mantle. Nature. 450(7171), 866–869 (2007).

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Draper-Joyce CJ, Khoshouei M, Thal DM, et al. Structure of the adenosine-bound human adenosine A1 receptor-Gi complex. Nature. 558(7711), 559–563 (2018).

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Ray Chaudhuri N, Chaudhuri B, Majumder R, Yazdani A. Multi-Terminal Direct-Current Grids. John Wiley & Sons, Inc, Hoboken, NJ.

An edited book

Jackson AC, editor. Viral Infections of the Human Nervous System. Springer, Basel.

A chapter in an edited book

Grigorian A, de Virgilio C, Hari DM. Abnormal Screening Mammogram. In: Surgery: A Case Based Clinical Review. de Virgilio C, Frank PN, Grigorian A (Eds.), Springer, New York, NY, 37–44 (2015).

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 Comparative Effectiveness Research.

Blog post

Andrew E. What Are Delusions – And How Best Can We Treat Them? [Internet]. IFLScience (2016). Available from: https://www.iflscience.com/brain/what-are-delusions-and-how-best-can-we-treat-them/.

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. Automobile Weight and Safety. 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

Chamberlin AA. Academic-related factors and emotional eating in adolescents. (2015).

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

Stewart JB. After Trump, Executives Ponder Path Into Politics. New York Times, B1 (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	Comparative Effectiveness Research
Abbreviation	J. Comp. Eff. Res.
ISSN (print)	2042-6305
ISSN (online)	2042-6313
Scope	Health Policy