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

Blair HT. Neuroscience. Charting the islands of memory. Science. 2014;343(6173):846-847.

A journal article with 2 authors

Fujiwara A, Takahashi Y. Manipulation of elementary charge in a silicon charge-coupled device. Nature. 2001;410(6828):560-562.

A journal article with 3 authors

Lee D, Lin BJ, Lee AK. Hippocampal place fields emerge upon single-cell manipulation of excitability during behavior. Science. 2012;337(6096):849-853.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Bekker A, Barley ME, Fiorentini ML, Rouxel OJ, Rumble D, Beresford SW. Atmospheric sulfur in Archean komatiite-hosted nickel deposits. Science. 2009;326(5956):1086-1089.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

van Helvoort H. SDH/SONET Explained in Functional Models. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd; 2006.

An edited book

Lakhani SR, Fox SB, eds. Molecular Pathology in Cancer Research. Springer; 2016.

A chapter in an edited book

Seffah A, Metzker E. ACUE Architecture and Components. In: Seffah A, Metzker E, eds. Adoption-Centric Usability Engineering: Systematic Deployment, Assessment and Improvement of Usability Methods in Software Engineering. Springer; 2009:59-71.

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

Carpineti A. It’s Now Possible To Combine Lasers Like In The Death Star. IFLScience. Published April 5, 2017. Accessed October 30, 2018. https://www.iflscience.com/technology/its-now-possible-to-combine-lasers-like-in-the-death-star/

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. Department of Transportation: Credit Assistance for Surface Transportation Projects. U.S. Government Printing Office; 1999.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Ladendorff MZ. The Effect of North American Electric Reliability Corporation Critical Infrastructure Protection Standards on Bulk Electric System Reliability. Doctoral dissertation. Capella 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 M. THE 1992 CAMPAIGN: The Democrats; Clinton’s Camp Says It Is Wary Of Perot Inroads. New York Times. October 22, 1992:A1.

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