How to format your references using the Current Problems in Surgery citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Current Problems in 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

Bianco P. Don’t market stem-cell products ahead of proof. Nature. 2013;499(7458):255.

A journal article with 2 authors

Alonso D, Pascual M. Comment on “A keystone mutualism drives pattern in a power function.” Science. 2006;313(5794):1739; author reply 1739.

A journal article with 3 authors

Kelbert A, Schultz A, Egbert G. Global electromagnetic induction constraints on transition-zone water content variations. Nature. 2009;460(7258):1003-1006.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Li R, Mitra N, Gratkowski H, et al. Activation of integrin alphaIIbbeta3 by modulation of transmembrane helix associations. Science. 2003;300(5620):795-798.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Scheinfeld R. Busting Loose from the Business Game. John Wiley & Sons, Inc.; 2009.

An edited book

Boykov Y, Kahl F, Lempitsky V, Schmidt FR, eds. Energy Minimization Methods in Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition: 8th International Conference, EMMCVPR 2011, St. Petersburg, Russia, July 25-27, 2011. Proceedings. Vol 6819. Springer; 2011.

A chapter in an edited book

Siqueira TLL, Ciferri RR, Times VC, de Aguiar Ciferri CD. Benchmarking Spatial Data Warehouses. In: Bach Pedersen T, Mohania MK, Tjoa AM, eds. Data Warehousing and Knowledge Discovery: 12th International Conference, DAWAK 2010, Bilbao, Spain, August/September 2010. Proceedings. Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Springer; 2010:40-51.

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 Current Problems in Surgery.

Blog post

Fang J. Babbler Bird Speak is Remarkably Human-Like. IFLScience.

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. GAO ADP Data Lines: Issue No. 2. U.S. Government Printing Office; 1983.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Williams-Newball TI. Domain, Community and Practice: An Empirical Investigation of the Relationship Between Communities of Practice and Professional Identity Among Veterinarians. Doctoral dissertation. George Washington University; 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

Kelly K. Trump Adviser’s $285 Million Exit Pay Questioned as to Possible Goldman Influence. New York Times. January 26, 2017: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	Current Problems in Surgery
Abbreviation	Curr. Probl. Surg.
ISSN (print)	0011-3840
Scope	General Medicine Surgery