How to format your references using the Chinese Neurosurgical Journal citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Chinese Neurosurgical Journal. 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

1. Putterman S. A physicist links magnetism, force and fatigue. Nature. 2008;454:257.

A journal article with 2 authors

1. Auer S, Frenkel D. Suppression of crystal nucleation in polydisperse colloids due to increase of the surface free energy. Nature. 2001;413:711–3.

A journal article with 3 authors

1. Nozaki T, Kato Y, Suzuki K. Late Jurassic ocean anoxic event: evidence from voluminous sulphide deposition and preservation in the Panthalassa. Sci Rep. 2013;3:1889.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

1. Brown KS, Marean CW, Herries AIR, Jacobs Z, Tribolo C, Braun D, et al. Fire as an engineering tool of early modern humans. Science. 2009;325:859–62.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

1. Adhikari S. Structural Dynamic Analysis with Generalized Damping Models. Hoboken, USA: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.; 2013.

An edited book

1. Oliva E, Muggia F, editors. Uterine Cancer: Screening, Diagnosis, and Treatment. Totowa, NJ: Humana Press; 2009.

A chapter in an edited book

1. Apsel A, Wang X, Dokania R. Traditional Synchronization in Radio Systems. In: Wang X, Dokania R, editors. Design of Ultra-Low Power Impulse Radios. New York, NY: Springer; 2014. p. 71–5.

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 Chinese Neurosurgical Journal.

Blog post

1. Andrew D. Geomythology: Can Geologists Relate Ancient Stories Of Great Floods To Real Events? IFLScience. IFLScience; 2016.

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

1. Government Accountability Office. Space Station: Plans to Expand Research Community Do Not Match Available Resources. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 1994 Nov. Report No.: NSIAD-95-33.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

1. Jakubowski JK. Making character education a reality: An investigation of secondary teachers’ perspectives toward implementation [Doctoral dissertation]. [Long Beach, CA]: California State University, Long Beach; 2013.

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

1. Pilon M. Keeping Their Dogs From Looking Like Ours. New York Times. 2013 Feb 12;B8.

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	Chinese Neurosurgical Journal
Abbreviation	Chin. Neurosurg. J.
ISSN (online)	2057-4967
Scope

Research and Writing Guides