How to format your references using the International Journal of Spine Surgery citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for International Journal of Spine 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

Butte AJ. Medicine. The ultimate model organism. Science. 2008;320(5874):325-327.

A journal article with 2 authors

Berkovits BD, Mayr C. Alternative 3’ UTRs act as scaffolds to regulate membrane protein localization. Nature. 2015;522(7556):363-367.

A journal article with 3 authors

D’Hondt S, Rutherford S, Spivack AJ. Metabolic activity of subsurface life in deep-sea sediments. Science. 2002;295(5562):2067-2070.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Fountain SJ, Parkinson K, Young MT, Cao L, Thompson CRL, North RA. An intracellular P2X receptor required for osmoregulation in Dictyostelium discoideum. Nature. 2007;448(7150):200-203.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Lundberg U, Cooper CL. The Science of Occupational Health. Wiley-Blackwell; 2010.

An edited book

Koch H. Dispersive Equations and Nonlinear Waves: Generalized Korteweg–de Vries, Nonlinear Schrödinger, Wave and Schrödinger Maps. Vol 45. (Tataru D, Vişan M, eds.). Springer; 2014.

A chapter in an edited book

Demant C, Garnica C, Streicher-Abel B. Overview: Segmentation. In: Streicher-Abel B, Garnica C, eds. Industrial Image Processing: Visual Quality Control in Manufacturing. Springer; 2013:83-111.

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 International Journal of Spine Surgery.

Blog post

Carpineti A. 3D Electron Discovery In High-Temperature Superconductor Could Lead To Breakthrough. IFLScience. Published November 6, 2015. Accessed October 30, 2018. https://www.iflscience.com/physics/new-discovery-get-us-closer-fully-understand-high-temperature-superconductors/

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. The Treasury Department and Its Bureaus Can Better Plan for and Control Computer Resources. U.S. Government Printing Office; 1982.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Rodriguez EP. Curriculum Development for Nursing Assistants: Pressure Ulcer Prevention Module. Doctoral dissertation. 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

Rothenberg B. Crowd Lifts Frenchwoman. Now, Who Will Hoist a First Major Trophy? New York Times. June 4, 2017:D4.

In-text citations

References should be cited in the text by sequential numbers in superscript:

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	International Journal of Spine Surgery
Abbreviation	Int. J. Spine Surg.
ISSN (online)	2211-4599
Scope	Orthopedics and Sports Medicine Surgery