How to format your references using the European Surgery citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for European Surgery. 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	Find the style here: output styles overview
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

1. Buffett B. Geomagnetic fluctuations reveal stable stratification at the top of the Earth’s core. Nature. 2014;507:484–7.

A journal article with 2 authors

1. Anderson D, Brenner S. Obituary: Seymour Benzer (1921-2007). Nature. 2008;451:139.

A journal article with 3 authors

1. Vecchi GA, Swanson KL, Soden BJ. Climate change. Whither hurricane activity? Science. 2008;322:687–9.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

1. Shigeta M, Ohtsuka S, Nishikawa-Torikai S, Yamane M, Fujii S, Murakami K, et al. Maintenance of pluripotency in mouse ES cells without Trp53. Sci Rep. 2013;3:2944.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

1. Hunter DA. A Practical Guide to Critical Thinking. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.; 2009.

An edited book

1. Waksman G, editor. Proteomics and Protein-Protein Interactions: Biology, Chemistry, Bioinformatics, and Drug Design. Boston, MA: Springer US; 2005.

A chapter in an edited book

1. Andersen ML, D’Almeida V, Ko GM, Martins PJF, Tufik S. Care and Maintenance of Laboratory Animals. In: Andersen ML, Tufik S, editors. Rodent Model as Tools in Ethical Biomedical Research. Cham: Springer International Publishing; 2016. p. 23–37.

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 Surgery.

Blog post

1. Andrew E. Health Check: five supplements that may help with depression [Internet]. IFLScience. IFLScience; 2014 [cited 2018 Oct 30]. Available from: https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/health-check-five-supplements-may-help-depression/

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

1. Government Accountability Office. Preparing, Documenting, and Referencing Lotus Spreadsheets. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 1987 Nov. Report No.: 134610.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

1. Holman R. Music history pedagogy: Three approaches to teaching a one-semester music history survey course in accordance with the LEAP Initiative [Doctoral dissertation]. [Long Beach, CA]: California State University, Long Beach; 2014.

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

1. Williams J. The Left Bank. New York Times. 2017 Feb 10;BR4.

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 Surgery
Abbreviation	Eur. Surg.
ISSN (print)	1682-8631
ISSN (online)	1682-4016
Scope	Surgery