How to format your references using the Journal of the American College of Surgeons citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Journal of the American College of Surgeons (JACS). 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

1. Bonvillian WB. Technology. Advanced manufacturing policies and paradigms for innovation. Science 2013;342:1173–1175.

A journal article with 2 authors

1. Mirabel IF, Rodrigues I. Formation of a black hole in the dark. Science 2003;300:1119–1120.

A journal article with 3 authors

1. Gess RW, Coates MI, Rubidge BS. A lamprey from the Devonian period of South Africa. Nature 2006;443:981–984.

A journal article with 5 or more authors

1. Gupta V, Kyaw AKK, Wang DH, et al. Barium: an efficient cathode layer for bulk-heterojunction solar cells. Sci Rep 2013;3:1965.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

1. Staebler P. Human Exposure to Electromagnetic Fields. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.; 2017.

An edited book

1. Katsikas S, López J, Pernul G eds. Trust, Privacy, and Security in Digital Business: Second International Conference, TrustBus 2005, Copenhagen, Denmark, August 22-26, 2005. Proceedings. Vol 3592. Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer; 2005.

A chapter in an edited book

1. Brenner C, Greenyer J, Schäfer W. On-the-Fly Synthesis of Scarcely Synchronizing Distributed Controllers from Scenario-Based Specifications. In: Egyed A, Schaefer I, eds. Fundamental Approaches to Software Engineering: 18th International Conference, FASE 2015, Held as Part of the European Joint Conferences on Theory and Practice of Software, ETAPS 2015, London, UK, April 11-18, 2015, Proceedings. Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer; 2015:51–65.

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 the American College of Surgeons.

Blog post

1. Andrew E. Can Bad Posture Give You A Hunchback? IFLScience 2016. Available at: https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/can-bad-posture-give-you-hunchback/. Accessed October 30, 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

1. Government Accountability Office. National Airspace System: Transformation will Require Cultural Change, Balanced Funding Priorities, and Use of All Available Management Tools. 2005.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

1. De La Cruz CF. A program evaluation of a literacy initiative for students with moderate to severe disabilities. 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

1. Hirshman L. Where Are the New Jobs for Women? New York Times 2008:A35.

In-text citations

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

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 the American College of Surgeons
Abbreviation	J. Am. Coll. Surg.
ISSN (print)	1072-7515
Scope	Surgery