How to format your references using the European Surgical Research citation style

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

Cohen MD. Economics. Learning with regret. Science. 2008 Feb;319(5866):1052–3.

A journal article with 2 authors

Redman CW, Sargent IL. Latest advances in understanding preeclampsia. Science. 2005 Jun;308(5728):1592–4.

A journal article with 3 authors

Pearson PD, Moje E, Greenleaf C. Literacy and science: each in the service of the other. Science. 2010 Apr;328(5977):459–63.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Kimel AV, Kirilyuk A, Usachev PA, Pisarev RV, Balbashov AM, Rasing T. Ultrafast non-thermal control of magnetization by instantaneous photomagnetic pulses. Nature. 2005 Jun;435(7042):655–7.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Smith CL. Basic Process Measurements. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.; 2009.

An edited book

Mayer M, Thörn C, Thörn H, editors. Urban Uprisings: Challenging Neoliberal Urbanism in Europe. London: Palgrave Macmillan UK; 2016.

A chapter in an edited book

Feng L, Hu Y, Hall CAS, Wang J. Comprehensive Analysis of the Energy Return on Investment (EROI) of China. In: Hu Y, Hall CAS, Wang J, editors. The Chinese Oil Industry: History and Future. New York, NY: Springer; 2013; pp 71–89.

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 Surgical Research.

Blog post

Carpineti A. First Results From The Chinese UV Telescope On The Moon [Internet]. IFLScience. 2015 Oct [cited 2018 Oct 30]. Available from: https://www.iflscience.com/space/first-results-chinese-uv-telescope-moon/

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. Request for Information Concerning Space Transportation System. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 1981.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Parkinson MM. Adult readers’ calibration of word learning. 2011

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

(nyt) SK. World Briefing | Europe: Ukraine: President Signs Land Reform Law. New York Times. 2001 Nov;A8.

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 Surgical Research
Abbreviation	Eur. Surg. Res.
ISSN (print)	0014-312X
ISSN (online)	1421-9921
Scope	Surgery