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

Schmidt C. Mental health: thinking from the gut. Nature. 2015 Feb 26;518(7540):S12-5.

A journal article with 2 authors

Ausländer S, Fussenegger M. Synthetic biology: Toehold gene switches make big footprints. Nature. 2014 Dec 18;516(7531):333–4.

A journal article with 3 authors

Naya Y, Yoshida M, Miyashita Y. Backward spreading of memory-retrieval signal in the primate temporal cortex. Science. 2001 Jan 26;291(5504):661–4.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Nambu Y, Sugai M, Gonda H, Lee CG, Katakai T, Agata Y, et al. Transcription-coupled events associating with immunoglobulin switch region chromatin. Science. 2003 Dec 19;302(5653):2137–40.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Smith CL. Distillation Control. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.; 2012.

An edited book

Harrison T, editor. Paleontology and Geology of Laetoli: Human Evolution in Context: Volume 2: Fossil Hominins and the Associated Fauna. Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands; 2011. XIV, 602 p. (Vertebrate Paleobiology and Paleoanthropology Series).

A chapter in an edited book

Chou BH, Suzuki E. Discovering Community-Oriented Roles of Nodes in a Social Network. In: Bach Pedersen T, Mohania MK, Tjoa AM, editors. Data Warehousing and Knowledge Discovery: 12th International Conference, DAWAK 2010, Bilbao, Spain, August/September 2010 Proceedings. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer; 2010. p. 52–64. (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. Why Do Elephants Rarely Get Cancer? IFLScience. 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

Government Accountability Office. Mass Transit Grants: Development Time Frames for Selected UMTA Projects. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 1991 Jul. Report No.: RCED-91-184FS.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Kehoe RM. Parental long-term care choices from the perspectives of their sandwich-generation adult children [Doctoral dissertation]. [Phoenix, AZ]: University of Phoenix; 2009.

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

Oestreich JR. Silvery, Then Raucous: A Leap Across Time. New York Times. 2017 Aug 16;C5.

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

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