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

Kling Jim. Careers in systems biology. Working the systems. Science 2006;311(5765):1305–6.

A journal article with 2 authors

Lum Lawrence., Beachy Philip A. The Hedgehog response network: sensors, switches, and routers. Science 2004;304(5678):1755–9.

A journal article with 3 authors

Fortin Norbert J., Wright Sean P., Eichenbaum Howard. Recollection-like memory retrieval in rats is dependent on the hippocampus. Nature 2004;431(7005):188–91.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Merrell D. Scott., Butler Susan M., Qadri Firdausi., et al. Host-induced epidemic spread of the cholera bacterium. Nature 2002;417(6889):642–5.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Nash Jen. Diabetes and Wellbeing. Oxford, UK: Wiley-Blackwell; 2013.

An edited book

Nersisyan Hrachya. Interactions Between Charged Particles in a Magnetic Field: A Theoretical Approach to Ion Stopping in Magnetized Plasmas. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer; 2007.

A chapter in an edited book

Noirez P., Butler-Browne G. Slowing down age-related muscle loss and sarcopenia. In: Rattan Suresh I. S., Kassem Moustapha, editors. Prevention and Treatment of Age-related Diseases. Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands; 2006. p. 71–85.

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

Evans Katy. Republicans Launch Attempt To Repeal Endangered Species Act. IFLScience. Available at: https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/republicans-launch-attempt-to-repeal-endangered-species-act/. 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. Three Studies at the Local Level. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 1992.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Chandwasker Tanmay. Comparison of ad-hoc on demand distance vector and enhanced-ad-hoc on demand distance vector on vehicular ad-hoc networks. Doctoral dissertation, California State University, Long Beach, Long Beach, CA, 2016.

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

Rafkin Louise. Sascha Rothchild and Matt Kay. New York Times 2011:ST14.

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