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

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

[1]

Bucksbaum PH. The future of attosecond spectroscopy. Science 2007;317:766–9.

A journal article with 2 authors

[1]

Yang T, Shadlen MN. Probabilistic reasoning by neurons. Nature 2007;447:1075–80.

A journal article with 3 authors

[1]

Liu F, Bakht S, Dean C. Cotranscriptional role for Arabidopsis DICER-LIKE 4 in transcription termination. Science 2012;335:1621–3.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

[1]

Tanimura A, Takashima M, Sugita T, Endoh R, Kikukawa M, Yamaguchi S, et al. Cryptococcus terricola is a promising oleaginous yeast for biodiesel production from starch through consolidated bioprocessing. Sci Rep 2014;4:4776.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

[1]

Baldwin D, Birkett J, Facey O, Rabey G. The Forensic Examination and Interpretation of Tool Marks. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd; 2013.

An edited book

[1]

Ronco AL. Nutritional Epidemiology of Breast Cancer. Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands; 2012.

A chapter in an edited book

[1]

Xu W, Zheng C, Sankoff D. Paths and Cycles in Breakpoint Graphs of Random Multichromosomal Genomes. In: Bourque G, El-Mabrouk N, editors. Comparative Genomics: RECOMB 2006 International Workshop, RCG 2006 Montreal, Canada, September 24-26, 2006 Proceedings, Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer; 2006, p. 51–62.

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 Visceral Surgery.

Blog post

[1]

Luntz S. Dramatic Battle Between Great White Sharks Caught On Camera. IFLScience 2014. https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/great-white-sharks-do-battle/ (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. Restructuring of the District of Columbia Department of Public Works’ Division of Transportation. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 2001.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

[1]

Torres Garcia AC. The Impact of Health Insurance Coverage on the Use of Preventive Health Services and Healthy Behaviors: Evidence from Mexico’s Public Health Insurance Program “Seguro Popular.” Doctoral dissertation. George Washington University, 2015.

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]

Lee L. Not at First Sight, or Even the First Dozen. New York Times 2013:ST12.

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 Visceral Surgery
Abbreviation	J. Visc. Surg.
ISSN (print)	1878-7886
Scope	General Medicine