Chicago 17th edition (notes–bibliography)
How to cite a clinical trial registry in Chicago 17th edition (notes–bibliography)
Trial registrations require official registry identifiers (NCT, EudraCT) and registration dates rather than standard publication volumes.
THE FORMAT
A clinical trial registry in Chicago, at a glance
Sponsor Name. “Title of Clinical Trial.” Clinical trial registration NCTxxxxxx, Year. ClinicalTrials.gov. URL.
Johns Hopkins Medicine. “Cognitive Behavioral Interventions in Pediatric Sleep Disorders.” Clinical trial registration NCT04192837, 2022. ClinicalTrials.gov. https://clinicaltrials.gov/study/NCT04192837.
1. Johns Hopkins Medicine, “Cognitive Behavioral Interventions in Pediatric Sleep Disorders,” clinical trial registration NCT04192837, 2022, https://clinicaltrials.gov/study/NCT04192837.
In prose: 5. Johns Hopkins Medicine, “Cognitive Behavioral Interventions.”
Copyeditor formats APA, MLA, Chicago and IEEE automatically — cite a source once and the bibliography builds itself. See how citations work .
BEFORE YOU FORMAT
What Chicago needs from a clinical trial registry
Elements to collect
- Sponsor or principal investigator name
- Registration year
- Title of the clinical trial
- Registry name (ClinicalTrials.gov, EU Clinical Trials)
- Registry identifier number (e.g., NCT04368728)
- URL of the trial record
Rules specific to this entry
- The registry ID number follows the trial title.
Building the entry, step by step
Collect the details
Before you format anything, gather every element Chicago needs for a clinical trial registry: Sponsor or principal investigator name; Registration year; Title of the clinical trial; Registry name (ClinicalTrials.gov, EU Clinical Trials).
Build the bibliography entry
Arrange those details in the Chicago order: Sponsor Name. “Title of Clinical Trial.” Clinical trial registration NCTxxxxxx, Year. ClinicalTrials.gov. URL.
Add the in-text citation
In the body of your paper, cite it as 1. Johns Hopkins Medicine, “Cognitive Behavioral Interventions in Pediatric Sleep Disorders,” clinical trial registration NCT04192837, 2022, https://clinicaltrials.gov/study/NCT04192837. — or work the same reference into your sentence as 5. Johns Hopkins Medicine, “Cognitive Behavioral Interventions.”.
Check it against the exceptions
The registry ID number follows the trial title.
Chicago RULES
The conventions behind every Chicago entry
The Chicago Manual of Style (17th ed.) is the authority. Where a journal or department publishes its own house rules, those win — check your submission guidelines before the bibliography is final.
The rules that apply across every source — author order, capitalization, how the bibliography is sorted, and where Chicago entries most often go wrong — are collected on the Chicago 17th edition (notes–bibliography) guide.
The same clinical trial registry in another style
Switching styles late in a draft is normal. Here is the same source formatted five other ways.
Questions about Chicago and clinical trial registries
What if the clinical trial registry has no author?
Move the title into the author position and alphabetize by the first significant word of that title — ignoring an initial “A”, “An” or “The”. In the text, use a shortened form of the title where the author name would go.
What do I need before I can cite a clinical trial registry?
Sponsor or principal investigator name, Registration year, Title of the clinical trial, and the rest of the elements listed above. Trial registrations require official registry identifiers (NCT, EudraCT) and registration dates rather than standard publication volumes.
Is there anything unusual about a clinical trial registry in Chicago?
The registry ID number follows the trial title.
Can I reformat this clinical trial registry in another style later?
By hand, you would retype the entry — the element order, punctuation and italics all differ between styles. In Copyeditor, sources are stored as structured data, so switching between APA, MLA, Chicago and IEEE reformats every citation and the whole reference list at once.
Cite it once
and never reformat it again
Copyeditor keeps sources as structured data, so switching between APA, MLA, Chicago and IEEE reformats every citation and the whole bibliography at once.
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