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]

W. Zeng, China’s challenge, Nature. 452 (2008) 1028–1029.

A journal article with 2 authors

[1]

S. Giovanoli, U. Meyer, Response to comment on “Stress in puberty unmasks latent neuropathological consequences of prenatal immune activation in mice,” Science. 340 (2013) 811.

A journal article with 3 authors

[1]

H. Watanabe, C.E. Nebel, S. Shikata, Isotopic homojunction band engineering from diamond, Science. 324 (2009) 1425–1428.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

[1]

X.H. Tan, S.F. Chan, K. Han, H. Xu, Combined effects of magnetic interaction and domain wall pinning on the coercivity in a bulk Nd₆₀Fe₃₀Al₁₀ ferromagnet, Sci. Rep. 4 (2014) 6805.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

[1]

A.J. Frantzen, Anglo-Saxon Keywords, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, Chichester, UK, 2012.

An edited book

[1]

L. Rocha, E.A. Cavalheiro, eds., Pharmacoresistance in Epilepsy: From Genes and Molecules to Promising Therapies, Springer, New York, NY, 2013.

A chapter in an edited book

[1]

A.E. Maxwell, V.M. Taylor, R. Bastani, Cancer Screening Among Asian Americans, in: A.H. Wu, D.O. Stram (Eds.), Cancer Epidemiology Among Asian Americans, Springer International Publishing, Cham, 2016: pp. 81–105.

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]

J. Fang, Toxin Resistance Suggests That Evolution Can Be Predictable, IFLScience. (2015).

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, Assessment of the Explanation That Immigration and Customs Enforcement Provided for Its Subsequent Transfer from the Spectrum Relocation Fund, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC, 2008.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

[1]

A. Hantgan, Aspects of Bangime Phonology, Morphology, and Morphosyntax, Doctoral dissertation, Indiana University, 2013.

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]

J. Kelly Beatty, Special to The New, EARLY DATA ARRIVE FROM PROBE ON VENUS, New York Times. (1985) C8.

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

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