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

Butler D. China rejects internet claims of human cases. Nature. 2005 Jun;435(7042):542–3.

A journal article with 2 authors

Zitvogel L, Kroemer G. CANCER. A p53-regulated immune checkpoint relevant to cancer. Science. 2015 Jul;349(6247):476–7.

A journal article with 3 authors

Jamtveit B, Austrheim H, Malthe-Sørenssen A. Accelerated hydration of the Earth’s deep crust induced by stress perturbations. Nature. 2000 Nov;408(6808):75–8.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Litingtung Y, Dahn RD, Li Y, Fallon JF, Chiang C. Shh and Gli3 are dispensable for limb skeleton formation but regulate digit number and identity. Nature. 2002 Aug;418(6901):979–83.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Whitcomb CA, Whitcomb LE. Effective Interpersonal and Team Communication Skills for Engineers. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.; 2013.

An edited book

Wortsman X, editor. Dermatologic Ultrasound with Clinical and Histologic Correlations. New York, NY: Springer; 2013.

A chapter in an edited book

Anochie-Boateng JK, Steyn WJ, Fisher C, Truter L. A Link of Full-Scale Accelerated Pavement Testing to Long-Term Pavement Performance Study in the Western Cape Province of South Africa. In: Aguiar-Moya JP, Vargas-Nordcbeck A, Leiva-Villacorta F, Loría-Salazar LG, editors. The Roles of Accelerated Pavement Testing in Pavement Sustainability: Engineering, Environment, and Economics. Cham: Springer International Publishing; 2016; pp 67–79.

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 D. Watch What Ants Do When A Phone Starts To Ring [Internet]. IFLScience. 2015 Sep [cited 2018 Oct 30]. Available from: https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/zombie-ants-encircle-ringing-phone/

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. Impact Aid: Most School Construction Requests Are Unfunded and Outdated. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 1990.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Tosti CL. Quantification of dispersed and aggregated iron in vivo by magnetic resonance imaging. 2009

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

Gurley G. Titans in Party Dresses: Socialite, debutante, advocate: all spell Hadley Marie Nagel, who at 19 boasts a résumé over the top. New York Times. 2010 Dec;ST1.

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