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

Hens Z: NANOMATERIALS. Economical routes to colloidal nanocrystals. Science 348:1211–1212, 2015

A journal article with 2 authors

Gann A, Witkowski J: The lost correspondence of Francis Crick. Nature 467:519–524, 2010

A journal article with 3 authors

Tassin P, Koschny T, Soukoulis CM: Applied physics. Graphene for terahertz applications. Science 341:620–621, 2013

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Mirica LM, Vance M, Rudd DJ, Hedman B, Hodgson KO, Solomon EI, et al: Tyrosinase reactivity in a model complex: an alternative hydroxylation mechanism. Science 308:1890–1892, 2005

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Anderson RJ, Groundwater PW, Todd A, Worsley AJ: Antibacterial Agents. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, 2012

An edited book

Clark JE (ed): Albert Cleage Jr. and the Black Madonna and Child. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan US, 2016

A chapter in an edited book

Santiano BJ: Common Sense, Use the Right Tool for the Job, in Sampaio P , Saraiva P (eds): Quality in the 21st Century: Perspectives from ASQ Feigenbaum Medal Winners. Cham: Springer International Publishing, 2016, pp 49–56

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

Carpineti A: Watch SpaceX’s Barge Landing In This Breathtaking 360 Video. IFLScience:2016 Available: https://www.iflscience.com/technology/space-x-barge-landing-breathtaking-360-view/. 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: Personnel Security: Pass and Security Clearance Data for the Executive Office of the President. 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

Malet DS: Foreign fighters: Transnational identity in civil conflicts. 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

Callahan M: Suspense. New York Times:BR26, 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 ^3,4,7,8.

About the journal

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

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