How to format your references using the Journal of Neurosurgery citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Journal of Neurosurgery. 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	Download the output style file
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

Schloss PD: Microbiology: An integrated view of the skin microbiome. Nature 514:44–45, 2014

A journal article with 2 authors

Rehren T, Pusch EB: Late Bronze Age glass production at Qantir-Piramesses, Egypt. Science 308:1756–1758, 2005

A journal article with 3 authors

Pavlov P, Svendsen JI, Indrelid S: Human presence in the European Arctic nearly 40,000 years ago. Nature 413:64–67, 2001

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Devries GA, Brunnbauer M, Hu Y, Jackson AM, Long B, Neltner BT, et al: Divalent metal nanoparticles. Science 315:358–361, 2007

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Zito R: Electrochemical Water Processing. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2011

An edited book

Anderson DM (ed): Leveraging: A Political, Economic and Societal Framework. Cham: Springer International Publishing, 2014

A chapter in an edited book

Zacher J: Synovectomy of Rheumatoid Joints, in Kampen WU , Fischer M (eds): Local Treatment of Inflammatory Joint Diseases: Benefits and Risks. Cham: Springer International Publishing, 2015, pp 71–78

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 Journal of Neurosurgery.

Blog post

Hale T: This Presidential Hopeful Has A Rather ... Interesting Theory On Why The Pyramids Were Built. IFLScience:2015 Available: https://www.iflscience.com/editors-blog/ben-carson-criticized-scientists-not-believing-pyramids-were-build-joseph/. Accessed 30 October 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

Government Accountability Office: Earth Observing System: Concentration on Near-Term EOSDIS Development May Jeopardize Long-Term Success. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1995

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Dair C: Development of a nutrition-related curriculum for sustainable food waste management for foodservice operations. 2015

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

Cooper M: A Personal Milestone For A.B.T.’s Fall Season. New York Times:C3, 2017

In-text citations

References should be cited in the text by sequential numbers in superscript:

This sentence cites one reference ².
This sentence cites two references ^3,4.
This sentence cites four references ^5–8.

About the journal

Full journal title	Journal of Neurosurgery
Abbreviation	J. Neurosurg.
ISSN (print)	0022-3085
ISSN (online)	1933-0693
Scope	Clinical Neurology Surgery