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:

PaperpileThe citation style is built in and you can choose it in Settings > Citation Style or Paperpile > Citation Style in Google Docs.
EndNoteFind the style here: output styles overview
Mendeley, Zotero, Papers, and othersThe style is either built in or you can download a CSL file that is supported by most references management programs.
BibTeXBibTeX 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.
Nowak MA. Prisoners of the dilemma. Nature. 2004;427(6974):491.
A journal article with 2 authors
1.
Martinez-Perez E, Moore G. Plant sciences. Promiscuous maize chromosomes. Science. 2004;303(5654):49-50.
A journal article with 3 authors
1.
Lee J, Park J, Choi C. Identification of phenotype deterministic genes using systemic analysis of transcriptional response. Sci Rep. 2014;4:4413.
A journal article with 7 or more authors
1.
Friedman RS, McAlpine MC, Ricketts DS, Ham D, Lieber CM. Nanotechnology: high-speed integrated nanowire circuits. Nature. 2005;434(7037):1085.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book
1.
Estampe D. Supply Chain Performance and Evaluation Models. John Wiley & Sons, Inc.; 2014.
An edited book
1.
Maestre JM, Negenborn RR, eds. Distributed Model Predictive Control Made Easy. Vol 69. Springer Netherlands; 2014.
A chapter in an edited book
1.
Allen TC. Lung Cancer Stem Cells. In: Cagle PT, Allen TC, Beasley MB, et al., eds. Molecular Pathology of Lung Cancer. Molecular Pathology Library. Springer; 2012:27-33.

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
1.
Carpineti A. This “Frankenstein” Galaxy Is Made Up Of Bits Of Other Galaxies. IFLScience. July 12, 2016. Accessed October 30, 2018. https://www.iflscience.com/space/this-frankenstein-galaxy-is-made-up-of-bits-of-other-galaxies/

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. Training America’s Labor Force: Potential, Progress, and Problems of Vocational Education. U.S. Government Printing Office; 1972.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation
1.
Dimapilis B. Service Line Extension: Acquisition of Fluoroscopy Equipment to Supplement Pain Management Procedures. Doctoral dissertation. California State University, Long Beach; 2015.

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.
Paulson M. ‘A Doll’s House, Part 2’ Is Closing on Broadway. New York Times. September 6, 2017:C3.

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 titleInternational Journal of Spine Surgery
AbbreviationInt. J. Spine Surg.
ISSN (online)2211-4599
ScopeOrthopedics and Sports Medicine
Surgery

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