How to format your references using the Interactive CardioVascular and Thoracic Surgery citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Interactive CardioVascular and Thoracic Surgery (ICVTS). 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

[1] Haag AL. Algae bloom again. Nature 2007;447:520–1.

A journal article with 2 authors

[1] Siliciano JD, Siliciano RF. AIDS/HIV. Rekindled HIV infection. Science 2014;345:1005–6.

A journal article with 3 authors

[1] Liu Q-S, Pu L, Poo M-M. Repeated cocaine exposure in vivo facilitates LTP induction in midbrain dopamine neurons. Nature 2005;437:1027–31.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

[1] Lin Q-Y, Mason JA, Li Z, Zhou W, O’Brien MN, Brown KA, et al. Building superlattices from individual nanoparticles via template-confined DNA-mediated assembly. Science 2018;359:669–72.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

[1] Center for Chemical Process Safety. Guidelines for Investigating Chemical Process Incidents. John Wiley & Sons, Inc.: Hoboken, NJ, 2003.

An edited book

[1] Daelemans W, Goethals B, Morik K, editors. Machine Learning and Knowledge Discovery in Databases: European Conference, ECML PKDD 2008, Antwerp, Belgium, September 15-19, 2008, Proceedings, Part I. Springer: Berlin, Heidelberg, 2008.

A chapter in an edited book

[1] Ning X, Yan Y, Qu K, Li Z. Reliability Analysis on Wing Structures under the Gust Load. In: Wang FL, Deng H, Gao Y, Lei J, Eds. Artificial Intelligence and Computational Intelligence: International Conference, AICI 2010, Sanya, China, October 23-24, 2010, Proceedings, Part II Springer: Berlin, Heidelberg, 2010; pp. 31–7.

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 Interactive CardioVascular and Thoracic Surgery.

Blog post

[1] Fang J. The California Two-Spot Is The First Octopus To Have Its Genome Sequenced. IFLScience. IFLScience 2015 [accessed 2018] .Available from https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/california-two-spot-first-octopus-have-its-genome-sequenced/.

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. Student Consolidation Loans: Further Analysis Could Lead to Enhanced Default Assumptions for Budgetary Cost Estimates. U.S. Government Printing Office: Washington, DC 2004.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

[1] Paustian ME. Evaluating competition between the non-native slug Arion subfuscus and the native slug Philomycus carolinianus. University of Maryland, College Park: College Park, MD 2010.

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] Kanter J, Ewing J. E.U. Says It May Sue 4 Countries for Letting VW Sell Polluting Vehicles. New York Times. 2016 Dec. 8B3.

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	Interactive CardioVascular and Thoracic Surgery
ISSN (print)	1569-9293
ISSN (online)	1569-9285
Scope