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

Ploegh HL. Don Craig Wiley (1944-2001). Nature. 2002 Jan;415(6871):492.

A journal article with 2 authors

Gittis AH, Brasier DJ. NEUROSCIENCE. Astrocytes tell neurons when to listen up. Science. 2015 Aug;349(6249):690–1.

A journal article with 3 authors

Cincotta RP, Wisnewski J, Engelman R. Human population in the biodiversity hotspots. Nature. 2000 Apr;404(6781):990–2.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Huelsenbeck JP, Ronquist F, Nielsen R, Bollback JP. Bayesian inference of phylogeny and its impact on evolutionary biology. Science. 2001 Dec;294(5550):2310–4.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Box GEP, Luceño A, Paniagua-Quiñones MDC. Statistical Control by Monitoring and Adjustment. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.; 2009.

An edited book

Babashah S, editor. Cancer Stem Cells: Emerging Concepts and Future Perspectives in Translational Oncology. 1st ed. 2015. Cham: Springer International Publishing; 2015.

A chapter in an edited book

Peled I, Suzan A. Pedagogical, Mathematical, and Epistemological Goals in Designing Cognitive Conflict Tasks for Teacher Education. In: Zaslavsky O, Sullivan P, editors. Constructing Knowledge for Teaching Secondary Mathematics: Tasks to enhance prospective and practicing teacher learning. Boston, MA: Springer US; 2011; pp 73–87.

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. Massive Stars Form Just like Smaller Stars, But With Extra Bangs [Internet]. IFLScience. 2016 Nov

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. Air Force Aircraft: Consolidating Fighter Squadrons Could Reduce Costs. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 1996.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Gunther A. The Effects of Writing Task Choice on Behavioral and Academic Outcomes of Students with ADHD. 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

Hodgman J. Bonus Advice From Judge John Hodgman. New York Times. 2017 Jul;MM22.

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