How to format your references using the International Surgery citation style

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

Gewin V. Biologist aims to ease the pain for entrepreneurs. Nature. 2006 Apr 6;440(7085):738–9.

A journal article with 2 authors

Xu D, Zhang Y. Ab Initio structure prediction for Escherichia coli: towards genome-wide protein structure modeling and fold assignment. Sci Rep. 2013;3:1895.

A journal article with 3 authors

Audouze K, Brunak S, Grandjean P. A computational approach to chemical etiologies of diabetes. Sci Rep. 2013;3:2712.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Volkov I, Banavar JR, Hubbell SP, Maritan A. Patterns of relative species abundance in rainforests and coral reefs. Nature. 2007 Nov 1;450(7166):45–9.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Morley D. Communications and Mobility. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd; 2017.

An edited book

Brombin C. Parametric and Nonparametric Inference for Statistical Dynamic Shape Analysis with Applications. 1st ed. 2016. Salmaso L, Fontanella L, Ippoliti L, Fusilli C, editors. Cham: Springer International Publishing; 2016. X, 115 p. 48 illus., 27 illus. in color. (SpringerBriefs in Statistics).

A chapter in an edited book

Buescher N, Holzer A, Weber A, Katzenbeisser S. Compiling Low Depth Circuits for Practical Secure Computation. In: Askoxylakis I, Ioannidis S, Katsikas S, Meadows C, editors. Computer Security – ESORICS 2016: 21st European Symposium on Research in Computer Security, Heraklion, Greece, September 26-30, 2016, Proceedings, Part II. Cham: Springer International Publishing; 2016. p. 80–98. (Lecture Notes in Computer Science).

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 Surgery.

Blog post

Andrew E. We may Finally Know why a Flu Vaccine Triggered Narcolepsy [Internet]. IFLScience. IFLScience; 2015 [cited 2018 Oct 30]. Available from: https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/we-may-finally-know-why-flu-vaccine-triggered-narcolepsy/

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. Software Capability Evaluation: VA’s Software Development Process Is Immature. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 1996 Jun. Report No.: AIMD-96-90.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Hantgan A. Aspects of Bangime Phonology, Morphology, and Morphosyntax [Doctoral dissertation]. [Bloomington, IN]: 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

Kelly M. Clinton Seeks to Expand Presidential Privacy. New York Times. 1992 Dec 2;B10.

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 Surgery
Abbreviation	Int. Surg.
ISSN (print)	0020-8868
Scope	Surgery