How to format your references using the Digestive Diseases citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Digestive Diseases. 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

Marx V. Epigenetics: Reading the second genomic code. Nature. 2012 Nov;491(7422):143–7.

A journal article with 2 authors

Cuzzi JN, Alexander CMO. Chondrule formation in particle-rich nebular regions at least hundreds of kilometres across. Nature. 2006 May;441(7092):483–5.

A journal article with 3 authors

Munsky B, Neuert G, van Oudenaarden A. Using gene expression noise to understand gene regulation. Science. 2012 Apr;336(6078):183–7.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Thomson RE, Mihály SF, Rabinovich AB, McDuff RE, Veirs SR, Stahr FR. Constrained circulation at Endeavour ridge facilitates colonization by vent larvae. Nature. 2003 Jul;424(6948):545–9.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Sarker SD, Nahar L. Chemistry for Pharmacy Students. West Sussex, England: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd,.; 2007.

An edited book

Ao S-I, Amouzegar M, Rieger BB, editors. Intelligent Automation and Systems Engineering. New York, NY: Springer; 2011.

A chapter in an edited book

Mañas P, Vercet A. Effect of PEF on Enzymes and Food Constituents. In: Raso J, Heinz V, editors. Pulsed Electric Fields Technology for the Food Industry: Fundamentals and Applications. Boston, MA: Springer US; 2006; pp 131–51.

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 Digestive Diseases.

Blog post

Andrew E. This Is Why You Will Lose Your Argument [Internet]. IFLScience. 2015 Jun [cited 2018 Oct 30]. Available from: https://www.iflscience.com/brain/why-you-will-lose-your-argument/

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. Air Traffic Control: FAA Has Not Fully Assessed Its User Request Evaluation Tool. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 1998.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Valenzuela MA. Pitties for the Kiddies: An Animal-Assisted Therapy Program. 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

Erlanger S, Kanter J. Starting British Election Campaign, May Warns of E.U. Meddling. New York Times. 2017 May;A6.

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	Digestive Diseases
Abbreviation	Dig. Dis.
ISSN (print)	0257-2753
ISSN (online)	1421-9875
Scope	General Medicine Gastroenterology