How to format your references using the Annals of the Royal College of Surgeons of England citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Annals of the Royal College of Surgeons of England. 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

Chase JM. Stochastic community assembly causes higher biodiversity in more productive environments. Science. 2010 Jun 11;328(5984):1388–91.

A journal article with 2 authors

Agarwal N, Bishai WR. Microbiology. Subversion from the sidelines. Science. 2010 Jan 22;327(5964):417–8.

A journal article with 3 authors

Caraveo-Frescas JA, Khan MA, Alshareef HN. Polymer ferroelectric field-effect memory device with SnO channel layer exhibits record hole mobility. Sci Rep. 2014 Jun 10;4:5243.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Zhu L, Gibson P, Currle DS, Tong Y, Richardson RJ, Bayazitov IT, et al. Prominin 1 marks intestinal stem cells that are susceptible to neoplastic transformation. Nature. 2009 Jan 29;457(7229):603–7.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Darbyshire P, Hampton D. Hedge Fund Modelling and Analysis Using MATLAB ®. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd; 2014.

An edited book

Wiendahl HP. Handbook Factory Planning and Design. Reichardt J, Nyhuis P, editors. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer; 2015. XVIII, 501 p. 439 illus., 409 illus. in color.

A chapter in an edited book

Davis RL, Simmons K. Automating Setup. In: Simmons K, editor. Pro SQL Server 2008 Mirroring. Berkeley, CA: Apress; 2009. p. 53–94.

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 Annals of the Royal College of Surgeons of England.

Blog post

Hale T. IFLScience. IFLScience; 2016 [cited 2018 Oct 30]. Freddie Mercury Gets His Own Asteroid For 70th Birthday. Available from: https://www.iflscience.com/space/freddie-mercury-gets-his-own-asteroid-for-70th-birthday/

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. Inquiry About the Research Grant To Develop a Portable Computer To Record Traffic Information for Verifying the Accuracy of Charges for Telecommunications Service. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 1974 Mar. Report No.: B-180444.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Karriem KL. The relationship between stress and emotional intelligence among direct-care workers [Doctoral dissertation]. [Phoenix, AZ]: University of Phoenix; 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

Stewart JB. Tiny School Outgains the Ivies. Here’s How. New York Times. 2017 Feb 9;B1.

In-text citations

References should be cited in the text by sequential numbers in parentheses:

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	Annals of the Royal College of Surgeons of England
Abbreviation	Ann. R. Coll. Surg. Engl.
ISSN (print)	0035-8843
ISSN (online)	1478-7083
Scope	General Medicine Surgery