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

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

Smaglik P. On the road. Nature 2004;427:85.

A journal article with 2 authors

[1]

Allen MR, Frame DJ. Atmosphere. Call off the quest. Science 2007;318:582–3.

A journal article with 3 authors

[1]

McLaughlin AC, Sher F, Attfield JP. Negative lattice expansion from the superconductivity--antiferromagnetism crossover in ruthenium copper oxides. Nature 2005;436:829–32.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

[1]

Koster DA, Croquette V, Dekker C, Shuman S, Dekker NH. Friction and torque govern the relaxation of DNA supercoils by eukaryotic topoisomerase IB. Nature 2005;434:671–4.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

[1]

Charalambides CA. Combinatorial Methods in Discrete Distributions: Charalambides/Combinatorial. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.; 2005.

An edited book

[1]

Choudary ADR. Real Analysis on Intervals. New Delhi: Springer India; 2014.

A chapter in an edited book

[1]

Leach R. Pneumonia. In: McLuckie A, editor. Respiratory Disease and its Management, London: Springer; 2009, p. 51–9.

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 Open.

Blog post

[1]

Fang J. Most Precise Images Ever Of The Early Universe Revealed. IFLScience 2014. https://www.iflscience.com/space/most-precise-baby-universe-pictures-revealed/ (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. Executive Guide: Leading Practices in Capital Decision-Making (Supersedes AIMD-98-110). Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 1998.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

[1]

Yuknis CM. A grounded theory of deaf middle school students’ revision of their own writing. Doctoral dissertation. University of Maryland, College Park, 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]

Vlasic B, Chapman MM. New Math for Detroit. New York Times 2015:B1.

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 Open
Abbreviation	Int. J. Surg. Open
ISSN (print)	2405-8572
Scope