How to format your references using the European Spine Journal citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for European Spine Journal. 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

Bolfan-Casanova N (2007) Geochemistry. Fuel for plate tectonics. Science 315:338–339

A journal article with 2 authors

Stevens RC, Wilson IA (2001) Tech.Sight. Industrializing structural biology. Science 293:519–520

A journal article with 3 authors

Wang J, Mei Y, Hicks D (2014) Science communication. Comment on “Quantifying long-term scientific impact.” Science 345:149

A journal article with 5 or more authors

Simoncini T, Hafezi-Moghadam A, Brazil DP, et al (2000) Interaction of oestrogen receptor with the regulatory subunit of phosphatidylinositol-3-OH kinase. Nature 407:538–541

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Ben-Daya M, Kumar U, Murthy DNP (2016) Introduction to Maintenance Engineering. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, Chichester, UK

An edited book

Shao J (2015) Optimization of Integrated Supply Chain Planning under Multiple Uncertainty. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

A chapter in an edited book

Manevitch LI, Gendelman OV (2011) Continuous Systems. In: Gendelman OV (ed) Tractable Models of Solid Mechanics: Formulation, Analysis and Interpretation. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, pp 237–293

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 European Spine Journal.

Blog post

Taub B (2016) Food For Thought: How Gut Bacteria Help Regulate Inflammation In The Brain. In: IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/brain/food-thought-how-gut-bacteria-help-regulate-inflammation-brain/. Accessed 30 Oct 2018

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 (1974) Assessment of the Work Incentive Program in Washington State. U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Moore DL (2012) The Challenge Program: A quantitative analysis of strategies designed to eliminate the achievement gap. Doctoral dissertation, Lindenwood University

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

Qiu L (2017) What He Said She Said, and a Disquisition About Disclosures. New York Times A11

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	European Spine Journal
Abbreviation	Eur. Spine J.
ISSN (print)	0940-6719
ISSN (online)	1432-0932
Scope	Orthopedics and Sports Medicine Surgery