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

Bennett R (2009) Journal club. A microbiologist wonders what turns us on. Nature 461:15

A journal article with 2 authors

Traas J, Vernoux T (2010) Plant science. Oscillating roots. Science 329:1290–1291

A journal article with 3 authors

Sainsbury S, Niesser J, Cramer P (2013) Structure and function of the initially transcribing RNA polymerase II-TFIIB complex. Nature 493:437–440

A journal article with 5 or more authors

Yang H, Jeffrey PD, Miller J, et al (2002) BRCA2 function in DNA binding and recombination from a BRCA2-DSS1-ssDNA structure. Science 297:1837–1848

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Aasma A, Dutta H, Natarajan PN (2017) An Introductory Course in Summability Theory. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ

An edited book

Kuro-o M (2012) Endocrine FGFs and Klothos. Springer US, New York, NY

A chapter in an edited book

Khojasteh SC, Wong H, Hop CECA (2011) Metabolism-Based Drug Interactions. In: Wong H, Hop CECA (eds) Drug Metabolism and Pharmacokinetics Quick Guide. Springer, New York, NY, pp 73–95

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

Carpineti A (2017) Seventeen Minor Planets Now Have New Names Thanks To A Competition. In: IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/space/seventeen-minor-planets-now-have-new-names-thanks-to-competition/. 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 (1990) Automated Systems: Legislative Branch’s Efforts in Sharing Payroll/Personnel Systems. 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

Howard R (2015) Aging well adult day care center. Doctoral dissertation, California State University, Long Beach

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

Williams J (2016) Disappearing Act: The Art and Fraud of Faking Your Own Death. New York Times C4

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