How to format your references using the Spinal Cord citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Spinal Cord. 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

Smith O. Biomedicine. Nota bene: weathering the big chill. Science 2003; 299: 530.

A journal article with 2 authors

Virgin HW, Walker BD. Immunology and the elusive AIDS vaccine. Nature 2010; 464: 224–231.

A journal article with 3 authors

Griffin DM, Hoffman DS, Strick PL. Corticomotoneuronal cells are ‘functionally tuned’. Science 2015; 350: 667–670.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Huang Z-T, Li Y-F, Jiang P-K, Chang SX, Song Z-L, Liu J et al. Long-term intensive management increased carbon occluded in phytolith (PhytOC) in bamboo forest soils. Sci Rep 2014; 4: 3602.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Lalanne C. Specification Development. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd: Chichester, UK, 2014.

An edited book

Reidsma D, Choi I, Bargar R (eds.). Intelligent Technologies for Interactive Entertainment: 6th International Conference, INTETAIN 2014, Chicago, IL, USA, July 9-11, 2014. Proceedings. Springer International Publishing: Cham, 2014.

A chapter in an edited book

Oeser J, Bunge H-P, Mohr M. Cluster Design in the Earth Sciences Tethys. In: Gerndt M, Kranzlmüller D (eds). High Performance Computing and Communications: Second International Conference, HPCC 2006, Munich, Germany, September 13-15, 2006. Proceedings. Springer: Berlin, Heidelberg, 2006, pp 31–40.

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 Spinal Cord.

Blog post

Fang J. One Injection Reverses Diabetes Symptoms Without Side Effects. IFLScience. 2014.https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/one-injection-reverses-diabetes-symptoms-without-side-effects/ (accessed 30 Oct2018).

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. Polar Satellites: Agencies Need to Address Potential Gaps in Weather and Climate Data Coverage. U.S. Government Printing Office: Washington, DC, 2011.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Bourgault RR. Multi-scale pedologic investigation of manganiferous soils in the Maryland Piedmont. 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

Quain JR. Cars Will Talk to One Another. Exactly How Is Less Certain. New York Times. 2017; : B4.

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	Spinal Cord
Abbreviation	Spinal Cord
ISSN (print)	1362-4393
ISSN (online)	1476-5624
Scope	General Medicine Clinical Neurology Neurology