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

Showman AP (2014) Astrophysics: Portrait of a dynamic neighbour. Nature 505:625–626

A journal article with 2 authors

Gui C, Wang J (2014) Silicon-organic hybrid slot waveguide based three-input multicasted optical hexadecimal addition/subtraction. Sci Rep 4:7491

A journal article with 3 authors

Xuereb A, Ulbricht H, Paternostro M (2013) Optomechanical interface for probing matter-wave coherence. Sci Rep 3:3378

A journal article with 5 or more authors

Groth A, Corpet A, Cook AJL, et al (2007) Regulation of replication fork progression through histone supply and demand. Science 318:1928–1931

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Rouse WB (2016) Universities as Complex Enterprises. John Wiley & Sons, Inc, Hoboken, NJ

An edited book

Agosti M, Borbinha J, Kapidakis S, et al (2009) Research and Advanced Technology for Digital Libraries: 13th European Conference, ECDL 2009, Corfu, Greece, September 27 - October 2, 2009. Proceedings. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

A chapter in an edited book

Smith MC (2016) Kinematically Detected Halo Streams. In: Newberg HJ, Carlin JL (eds) Tidal Streams in the Local Group and Beyond: Observations and Implications. Springer International Publishing, Cham, pp 113–139

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

Hamilton K (2015) Three Category 4 Hurricanes Churn In The Pacific Ocean. In: IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/environment/three-category-4-hurricanes-churn-pacific-ocean/. 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 (1988) ADP Modernization: Army Plans To Improve Budget Disclosure for Its Standard Depot System. 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

Emerson JD (2001) The Jambalaya That is My Brain. Doctoral dissertation, University of Cincinnati

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

Baker P, Fisher I (2017) Trump Stresses Palestinian Deal. New York Times A1

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

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