How to format your references using the Journal of Robotic Surgery citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Journal of Robotic 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

Brumfiel G (2003) Gravity experiment sparks spat between physicists. Nature 421:198

A journal article with 2 authors

Robertson MP, Scott WG (2007) The structural basis of ribozyme-catalyzed RNA assembly. Science 315:1549–1553

A journal article with 3 authors

Williams JR, Dicarlo L, Marcus CM (2007) Quantum Hall effect in a gate-controlled p-n junction of graphene. Science 317:638–641

A journal article with 5 or more authors

Griffitts JS, Haslam SM, Yang T, et al (2005) Glycolipids as receptors for Bacillus thuringiensis crystal toxin. Science 307:922–925

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Szeman I, O’Brien S (2017) Popular Culture. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ

An edited book

Delgado SV (2015) Contemporary Psychodynamic Psychotherapy for Children and Adolescents: Integrating Intersubjectivity and Neuroscience. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

A chapter in an edited book

Cornely R, Grewal T, Gaus K (2012) The Actin Cytoskeleton and Membrane Organisation in T Lymphocytes. In: Kavallaris M (ed) Cytoskeleton and Human Disease. Humana Press, Totowa, NJ, pp 103–121

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 Robotic Surgery.

Blog post

Davis J (2017) Coral Reefs Generate $36 Billion In Tourism, So We Should Take Better Care Of Them. In: IFLScience. Accessed 30 Oct 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 (1987) FAA Work Force Issues. U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Cox AM (2017) Functional Gain and Change Mechanisms in Post-Production Complex Systems. Doctoral dissertation, George Washington University

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

Marx L (2015) A Modern Marriage With Multiple Parts. New York Times ST17

In-text citations

References should be cited in the text by sequential numbers in square brackets:

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 Robotic Surgery
Abbreviation	J. Robot. Surg.
ISSN (print)	1863-2483
ISSN (online)	1863-2491
Scope	Health Informatics Surgery