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

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Journal of Neurosurgery: Spine. 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

Smith BE. Structure. Nitrogenase reveals its inner secrets. Science. 2002;297(5587):1654-1655.

A journal article with 2 authors

Pera MF, Tam PPL. Extrinsic regulation of pluripotent stem cells. Nature. 2010;465(7299):713-720.

A journal article with 3 authors

Jacobson MZ, Colella WG, Golden DM. Cleaning the air and improving health with hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles. Science. 2005;308(5730):1901-1905.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Karuppagounder SS, Brahmachari S, Lee Y, Dawson VL, Dawson TM, Ko HS. The c-Abl inhibitor, nilotinib, protects dopaminergic neurons in a preclinical animal model of Parkinson’s disease. Sci Rep. 2014;4:4874.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Ben Mahmoud MS, Larrieu N, Pirovano A. Risk Propagation Assessment for Network Security. John Wiley & Sons, Inc.; 2013.

An edited book

MacLean D. Android Fragments. (Komatineni S, ed.). Apress; 2014.

A chapter in an edited book

Almeida A, Rebelo F, Noriega P. Development of a Virtual Environment for Safety Warnings Behavior Compliance Evaluation. In: Rebelo F, Soares M, eds. Advances in Ergonomics in Design: Proceedings of the AHFE 2016 International Conference on Ergonomics in Design, July 27-31, 2016, Walt Disney World®, Florida, USA. Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing. Springer International Publishing; 2016:35-42.

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: Spine.

Blog post

Andrew E. DIY Can Be Dangerous – But It’s The Invisible Dust That May Harm You The Most. IFLScience. August 20, 2015. Accessed October 30, 2018. https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/diy-can-be-dangerous-it-s-invisible-dust-may-harm-you-most/

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. Commerce ADP Procurement: Contracting and Market Share Information. U.S. Government Printing Office; 1990.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Ndiaye O. The Predictability of the Sahelian Climate: Seasonal Sahel Rainfall and Onset over Senegal. Doctoral dissertation. Columbia University; 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

Norton MB. Woman of the World. New York Times. January 22, 2012:BR14.

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	Journal of Neurosurgery: Spine
Abbreviation	J. Neurosurg. Spine
ISSN (print)	1547-5654
ISSN (online)	1547-5646
Scope	General Medicine