How to format your references using the Neurosurgery Clinics of North America citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Neurosurgery Clinics of North America (NEC). 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

Freeman Benny. Not all membrane pores are made equal; some are more equal than others. Nature 2008;454(7205):671.

A journal article with 2 authors

Tatar Marc., Rand David M. Aging. Dietary advice on Q. Science 2002;295(5552):54–5.

A journal article with 3 authors

Tschöp M., Smiley D. L., Heiman M. L. Ghrelin induces adiposity in rodents. Nature 2000;407(6806):908–13.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Lewis K. A., Gray P. C., Blount A. L., et al. Betaglycan binds inhibin and can mediate functional antagonism of activin signalling. Nature 2000;404(6776):411–4.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Caferra Ricardo. Logic for Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc; 2011.

An edited book

Anderson James V. Advances in Plant Dormancy. Cham: Springer International Publishing; 2015.

A chapter in an edited book

Hutchinson C. Richard. Manipulating Microbial Metabolites for Drug Discovery and Production. In: Zhang Lixin, Demain Arnold L., editors. Natural Products: Drug Discovery and Therapeutic Medicine. Totowa, NJ: Humana Press; 2005. p. 77–93.

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 Neurosurgery Clinics of North America.

Blog post

Hale Tom. This Guy Built A Homemade Hoverbike In His Shed. IFLScience. Available at: https://www.iflscience.com/physics/guy-built-homemade-hoverbike-his-shed/. 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

Government Accountability Office. Guaranteed Student Loans: Better Criteria Needed for Financing Guarantee Agencies. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 1986.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Sripinit Teerawut. How Much Do We Understand About Asymmetric Effects of Monetary Policy? Doctoral dissertation, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC, 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

Vecsey George. Parade of Poor Play. New York Times 2009:B15.

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 title	Neurosurgery Clinics of North America
Abbreviation	Neurosurg. Clin. N. Am.
ISSN (print)	1042-3680
ISSN (online)	1558-1349
Scope	General Medicine Clinical Neurology Surgery