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. Scarpa T. Research funding: peer review at NIH. Science 2006;311:41.

A journal article with 2 authors

1. Zhou Z, Zheng S. The missing link in Ginkgo evolution. Nature 2003;423:821–822.

A journal article with 3 authors

1. Murphy RA, Mondragón E, Murphy VA. Rule learning by rats. Science 2008;319:1849–1851.

A journal article with 5 or more authors

1. Conboy IM, Conboy MJ, Smythe GM, Rando TA. Notch-mediated restoration of regenerative potential to aged muscle. Science 2003;302:1575–1577.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

1. Cauvin C, Escobar F, Serradj A. Cartography and the Impact of the Quantitative Revolution. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.; 2010.

An edited book

1. Aroyo L, Welty C, Alani H, et al. eds. The Semantic Web – ISWC 2011: 10th International Semantic Web Conference, Bonn, Germany, October 23-27, 2011, Proceedings, Part I. Vol 7031. Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer; 2011.

A chapter in an edited book

1. Osakada F, Takahashi M. Stem Cells in the Developing and Adult Nervous System. In: Steinhoff G, ed. Regenerative Medicine - from Protocol to Patient: 1. Biology of Tissue Regeneration. Cham: Springer International Publishing; 2016:123–149.

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. Luntz S. Where Is All The “Missing” Carbon Going? IFLScience 2015. Available at: https://www.iflscience.com/chemistry/deserts-carbon-sinks-come/. 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. Feasibility of Requiring Financial Assurances for the Recall or Destruction of Unsafe Consumer Products. 2009.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

1. Salifu A. Names that prick: Royal praise names in Dagbon, northern Ghana. 2008.

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. Gustines GG. It Came From the Suburbs: New Life for a Swamp Creature. New York Times 2011:C5.

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