How to format your references using the Contemporary Accounting Research citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Contemporary Accounting Research (CAR). 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 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

Hampshire, V. 2000. “Poorly conducted (or reported) animal tests put humans at risk.” Nature 407 (6805): 671.

A journal article with 2 authors

Germain, R. N., and W. E. Paul. 2011. “Baruj Benacerraf (1920-2011).” Nature 477 (7362): 34.

A journal article with 3 authors

Jackson, B. A., T. K. Bikson, and P. P. Gunn. 2013. “Science and law. Human subjects protection and research on terrorism and conflict.” Science (New York, N.Y.) 340 (6131): 434–35.

A journal article with 11 or more authors

Swaddle, T. W., J. Rosenqvist, P. Yu, E. Bylaska, B. L. Phillips, and W. H. Casey. 2005. “Kinetic evidence for five-coordination in AlOH(aq)2+ ion.” Science (New York, N.Y.) 308 (5727): 1450–53.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Berto, F. 2009. There’s Something about Gödel. Oxford, UK: Wiley-Blackwell.

An edited book

Holland, S., K. Wilkie, P. Mulholland, and A. Seago, eds. 2013. Music and Human-Computer Interaction. Springer Series on Cultural Computing. London: Springer.

A chapter in an edited book

Badyda, A. J., P. Dabrowiecki, W. Lubinski, P. O. Czechowski, and G. Majewski. 2013. “Exposure to Traffic-Related Air Pollutants as a Risk of Airway Obstruction.” In Respiratory Regulation - Clinical Advances, edited by M. Pokorski, 35–45. Advances in Experimental Medicine and Biology. Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands.

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 Contemporary Accounting Research.

Blog post

Hamilton, K. 2017. “This New Treatment Could Make Pancreatic Cancer A Manageable Disease.” IFLScience. IFLScience, February 10, 2017, https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/this-new-treatment-could-make-pancreatic-cancer-a-manageable-disease/.

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. 1989. “FAA Training: Continued Improvements Needed in FAA’s Controller Field Training Program.” RCED-89-83. 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

Nguyen, H. T. 2013. “The ugly duckling: Juvenile delinquents in non-delinquent networks.” Doctoral dissertation, Long Beach, CA: California State University, Long Beach.

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

Grynbaum, M. M. 2017. “‘Wow’: Stunned Cable News Hosts Reacted in Real Time to Trump.” New York Times, August 16, 2017.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Hampshire 2000).
This sentence cites two references (Hampshire 2000; Germain and Paul 2011).

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

Two authors: (Germain and Paul 2011)
Three or more authors: (Swaddle et al. 2005)

About the journal

Full journal title	Contemporary Accounting Research
ISSN (online)	1911-3846
Scope