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

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

P. Smaglik, Scientific personalities, Nature. 433 (2005) 177.

A journal article with 2 authors

[1]

D. Malakoff, A. Cho, MILITARY RESEARCH: Researchers Target Flaws in Ballistic Missile Defense Plan, Science. 288 (2000) 1940–1941.

A journal article with 3 authors

[1]

J.P. Sachs, R.F. Anderson, S.J. Lehman, Glacial surface temperatures of the southeast Atlantic Ocean, Science. 293 (2001) 2077–2079.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

[1]

G. Yancheva, N.R. Nowaczyk, J. Mingram, P. Dulski, G. Schettler, J.F.W. Negendank, J. Liu, D.M. Sigman, L.C. Peterson, G.H. Haug, Influence of the intertropical convergence zone on the East Asian monsoon, Nature. 445 (2007) 74–77.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

[1]

J.R. Wright, J.E. Cooper, Introduction to Aircraft Aeroelasticity and Loads, John Wiley & Sons Ltd, Chichester, UK, 2014.

An edited book

[1]

A. DeMaris, Converting Data into Evidence: A Statistics Primer for the Medical Practitioner, Springer, New York, NY, 2013.

A chapter in an edited book

[1]

I. Falco, A. Cioppa, D. Maisto, E. Tarantino, Differential Evolution for the Registration of Remotely Sensed Images, in: A. Saad, K. Dahal, M. Sarfraz, R. Roy (Eds.), Soft Computing in Industrial Applications: Recent Trends, Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, 2007: pp. 40–49.

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 Surgery.

Blog post

[1]

E. Andrew, Cloudy Issue: We Need To Fix The Barrier Reef’s Murky Waters, IFLScience. (2015). https://www.iflscience.com/environment/cloudy-issue-we-need-fix-barrier-reef-s-murky-waters/ (accessed October 30, 2018).

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, Desert Shield/Storm: U.S. Transportation Command’s Support of Operation, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC, 1992.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

[1]

U.L. Wosu, Geochemical Analysis of Late Pleistocene Sediments from Fossil Lake, Northern Lake County, Oregon, Doctoral dissertation, University of Louisiana, 2017.

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]

M.W. Walsh, Hedge Funds Sue Governor of Puerto Rico Over Spending, New York Times. (2016) B6.

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	International Journal of Surgery
Abbreviation	Int. J. Surg.
ISSN (print)	1743-9191
Scope	General Medicine Surgery