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How to format your references using the Journal of Surgical Research citation style

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

PaperpileThe citation style is built in and you can choose it in Settings > Citation Style or Paperpile > Citation Style in Google Docs.
EndNoteDownload the output style file
Mendeley, Zotero, Papers, and othersThe style is either built in or you can download a CSL file that is supported by most references management programs.
BibTeXBibTeX 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
1.
Dutton PL. Retrospective. Britton Chance (1913-2010). Science. 2010;330(6011):1641.
A journal article with 2 authors
1.
Bisley JW, Goldberg ME. Neuronal activity in the lateral intraparietal area and spatial attention. Science. 2003;299(5603):81-86.
A journal article with 3 authors
1.
Volkov I, Banavar JR, Maritan A. Comment on “Computational improvements reveal great bacterial diversity and high metal toxicity in soil.” Science. 2006;313(5789):918; author reply 918.
A journal article with 7 or more authors
1.
Murase K, Hirano Y, Sun TP, Hakoshima T. Gibberellin-induced DELLA recognition by the gibberellin receptor GID1. Nature. 2008;456(7221):459-463.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book
1.
Horrocks G. Greek. Wiley-Blackwell; 2010.
An edited book
1.
Peterson DL, Vose JM, Patel-Weynand T, eds. Climate Change and United States Forests. Vol 57. Springer Netherlands; 2014.
A chapter in an edited book
1.
Adaricheva K, Nation JB. Convex Geometries. In: Grätzer G, Wehrung F, eds. Lattice Theory: Special Topics and Applications: Volume 2. Springer International Publishing; 2016:153-179.

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 Surgical Research.

Blog post
1.
Andrew E. Killing Whales For Science: Japan Is Sent Back To The Drawing Board. IFLScience.

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
1.
Government Accountability Office. China: U.S. Universities in China Emphasize Academic Freedom but Face Internet Censorship and Other Challenges. U.S. Government Printing Office; 2016.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation
1.
Sahebjame M. Marriage: An Authentic Iranian Experience of the Modern. Doctoral dissertation. California State University, Long Beach; 2012.

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
1.
Vlasic B, Chapman MM. U.A.W. Plans to Re-engage Fiat Chrysler. New York Times. October 2, 2015:B7.

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 titleJournal of Surgical Research
AbbreviationJ. Surg. Res.
ISSN (print)0022-4804
ScopeSurgery

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