How to format your references using the Seminars in Pediatric Surgery citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Seminars in Pediatric 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	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

Pälike H. Geochemistry. Impact and extinction. Science. 2013;339(6120):655-656.

A journal article with 2 authors

Williams WM, Ceci SJ. Recruiters and academia. Academics worry about hiring “undiscovered geniuses.” Nature. 2005;435(7041):534.

A journal article with 3 authors

Miake J, Marbán E, Nuss HB. Biological pacemaker created by gene transfer. Nature. 2002;419(6903):132-133.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Tanaka H, Okano Y, Kobayashi H, Suzuki W, Kobayashi A. A three-dimensional synthetic metallic crystal composed of single-component molecules. Science. 2001;291(5502):285-287.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Wind YJ, Hays CF. Beyond Advertising. John Wiley & Sons, Inc; 2015.

An edited book

Knobloch P, ed. Boundary and Interior Layers, Computational and Asymptotic Methods - BAIL 2014. Vol 108. Springer International Publishing; 2015.

A chapter in an edited book

Pratt-Hartmann I. The Two-Variable Fragment with Counting Revisited. In: Dawar A, Queiroz R de, eds. Logic, Language, Information and Computation: 17th International Workshop, WoLLIC 2010, Brasilia, Brazil, July 6-9, 2010. Proceedings. Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Springer; 2010:42-54.

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 Seminars in Pediatric Surgery.

Blog post

Andrews R. The Word “Science” Has Disappeared From The EPA’s Mission Statement. IFLScience. March 9, 2017. Accessed October 30, 2018. https://www.iflscience.com/environment/science-disappeared-epa-mission-statement/

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. Telecommunications: Issues Related to Competition and Subscriber Rates in the Cable Television Industry. U.S. Government Printing Office; 2003.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Farrugia TJ. Abundance, Habitat Use and Movement Patterns of the Shovelnose Guitarfish (Rhinobatus Productus) in a Restored Southern California Estuary. Doctoral dissertation. California State University, Long Beach; 2010.

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

Gorman J. For Dogs, It’s What You Say and Also How You Say It. New York Times. August 30, 2016:A14.

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	Seminars in Pediatric Surgery
Abbreviation	Semin. Pediatr. Surg.
ISSN (print)	1055-8586
Scope	Pediatrics, Perinatology, and Child Health Surgery