How to format your references using the British Journal of Surgery citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for British Journal of Surgery. 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 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

Ryan AJ. Journal club. A chemist welcomes an ingenious advance in plastics technology. Nature. 2009 Apr 2; 458: 553.

A journal article with 2 authors

Ringler P, Schulz GE. Self-assembly of proteins into designed networks. Science. 2003 Oct 3; 302: 106–109.

A journal article with 3 authors

Santos NC, Benz W, Mayor M. Extrasolar planets: constraints for planet formation models. Science. 2005 Oct 14; 310: 251–255.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Li Z-Y, Wang Y-Z, He L-M, Zheng H-J. Metabolic profiles of prokaryotic and eukaryotic communities in deep-sea sponge Neamphius huxleyi [corrected]. indicated by metagenomics. Sci Rep. 2014 Jan 27; 4: 3895.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Ytterdal T, Cheng Y, Fjeldly TA. Device Modeling for Analog and RF CMOS Circuit Design. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd; 2003.

An edited book

Treinen R, editor. Rewriting Techniques and Applications: 20th International Conference, RTA 2009 Brasília, Brazil, June 29 - July 1, 2009 Proceedings. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer; 2009.

A chapter in an edited book

Balks MR, Zabowski D. Soils of Grasslands and Rangelands. In: Zabowski D, editor. Celebrating Soil: Discovering Soils and Landscapes. Cham: Springer International Publishing; 2016. p. 95–118.

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 British Journal of Surgery.

Blog post

Andrew E. Vitamin B3 May Have Originated From Space [Internet]. IFLScience. IFLScience; 2015 [cited 2018 Oct 30]. Available from: https://www.iflscience.com/chemistry/vitamin-b3-may-have-originated-space/

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. Treasury Electronic Signature Concept. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 1994 Aug. Report No.: AIMD-94-167R.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Chan BK. Hyperboloid-Parameterized Description of Diffusive Superconducting-Magnetic Hybrid Systems [Doctoral dissertation]. [Long Beach, CA]: California State University, Long Beach; 2017.

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

Kenigsberg B. Ta’ang. New York Times. 2017 May 4; C9.

In-text citations

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

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	British Journal of Surgery
Abbreviation	Br. J. Surg.
ISSN (print)	0007-1323
Scope	Surgery