How to format your references using the Clinical Spine Surgery citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Clinical Spine 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	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. Kinder DR. Politics and the life cycle. Science. 2006;312(5782):1905–1908.

A journal article with 2 authors

1. Heinberg R, Fridley D. The end of cheap coal. Nature. 2010;468(7322):367–369.

A journal article with 3 authors

1. Krauss LM, Dodelson S, Meyer S. Primordial gravitational waves and cosmology. Science. 2010;328(5981):989–992.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

1. de Garidel-Thoron T, Rosenthal Y, Bassinot F, et al. Stable sea surface temperatures in the western Pacific warm pool over the past 1.75 million years. Nature. 2005;433(7023):294–298.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

1. Keene J. Clients with Complex Needs: Interprofessional Practice. Oxford, UK: Blackwell Science Ltd; 2008.

An edited book

1. Kiritsis D, Emmanouilidis C, Koronios A, et al., eds. Engineering Asset Lifecycle Management: Proceedings of the 4th World Congress on Engineering Asset Management (WCEAM 2009), 28-30 September 2009. London: Springer; 2010.

A chapter in an edited book

1. Child IG, Ehiri JE. Maternal and Child Health in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) Countries. In: Ehiri J, ed. Maternal and Child Health: Global Challenges, Programs, and Policies. Boston, MA: Springer US; 2009:53–81.

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 Clinical Spine Surgery.

Blog post

1. Andrew E. Why We Fell Out Of Love With Algorithms Inspired By Nature. IFLScience. 2015.

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. Data Mining: Federal Efforts Cover a Wide Range of Uses. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 2004.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

1. Gajewski TJ. Exploring leadership styles from a mediator’s perspective: A phenomenological study examining four specific organizational leadership styles and their relationship to four mediation styles as summarized by Leonard L. Riskin. 2014.

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. Christie R. Trump and Black America. New York Times. September 5, 2016:A19.

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	Clinical Spine Surgery
Abbreviation	Clin. Spine Surg.
ISSN (print)	2380-0186
ISSN (online)	2380-0194
Scope	Clinical Neurology Orthopedics and Sports Medicine Surgery