How to format your references using the General Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for General Thoracic and Cardiovascular 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. Smaglik P. Language lessons: Heidelberg. Nature. 2003;423:364–5.

A journal article with 2 authors

1. Stahl AE, Feigenson L. Cognitive development. Observing the unexpected enhances infants’ learning and exploration. Science. 2015;348:91–4.

A journal article with 3 authors

1. Hori S, Nomura T, Sakaguchi S. Control of regulatory T cell development by the transcription factor Foxp3. Science. 2003;299:1057–61.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

1. Khan RS, Martinez MD, Sy JC, Pendergrass KD, Che P-L, Brown ME, et al. Targeting extracellular DNA to deliver IGF-1 to the injured heart. Sci Rep. 2014;4:4257.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

1. Dasgupta A. Resolving Erroneous Reports in Toxicology and Therapeutic Drug Monitoring. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.; 2012.

An edited book

1. Li K, Jesshope C, Jin H, Gaudiot J-L, editors. Network and Parallel Computing: IFIP International Conference, NPC 2007, Dalian, China, September 18-21, 2007. Proceedings. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer; 2007.

A chapter in an edited book

1. Barbin É, Guitart R. Mathematical Physics in the Style of Gabriel Lamé and the Treatise of Emile Mathieu. In: Barbin E, Pisano R, editors. The Dialectic Relation Between Physics and Mathematics in the XIXth Century. Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands; 2013. p. 97–119.

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 General Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery.

Blog post

1. Fang J. Layer of Sunscreen Discovered on Boiling-Hot Exoplanet [Internet]. IFLScience. IFLScience; 2015 [cited 2018 Oct 30]. Available from: https://www.iflscience.com/space/layer-sunscreen-discovered-boiling-hot-exoplanet/

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. Air Passenger Screening: Transportation Security Administration Needs to Improve Complaint Processes. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 2012 Nov. Report No.: GAO-13-186T.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

1. Cornelius DA. The value of Scrum to organizations: A case study [Doctoral dissertation]. [Phoenix, AZ]: University of Phoenix; 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. Rebanks J. An English Shepherd in America. New York Times. 2017 Mar 1;SR4.

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	General Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery
Abbreviation	Gen. Thorac. Cardiovasc. Surg.
ISSN (print)	1863-6705
ISSN (online)	1863-6713
Scope	General Medicine Cardiology and Cardiovascular Medicine Pulmonary and Respiratory Medicine Surgery