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

Adams JU. Genetics: Big hopes for big data. Nature 2015; 527: S108-9.

A journal article with 2 authors

Campins H, Comfort CM. Solar system: Evaporating asteroid. Nature 2014; 505: 487–488.

A journal article with 3 authors

Chen X, Parker D, Singh DJ. Importance of non-parabolic band effects in the thermoelectric properties of semiconductors. Sci Rep 2013; 3: 3168.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Smith RR, Killelea DR, DelSesto DF, Utz AL. Preference for vibrational over translational energy in a gas-surface reaction. Science 2004; 304: 992–995.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Box GEP, Luceño A, Paniagua-Quiñones MDC. Statistical Control by Monitoring and Adjustment. John Wiley & Sons, Inc.: Hoboken, NJ, 2009.

An edited book

Evans-Winters VE, Bethune MC (eds.). (Re)Teaching Trayvon: Education for Racial Justice and Human Freedom. SensePublishers: Rotterdam, 2014.

A chapter in an edited book

Wozniak CA, McClung G, Gagliardi J, Segal M, Matthews K. Regulation of Genetically Engineered Microorganisms Under FIFRA, FFDCA and TSCA. In: Wozniak CA, McHughen A (eds). Regulation of Agricultural Biotechnology: The United States and Canada. Springer Netherlands: Dordrecht, 2012, pp 57–94.

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

Hamilton K. Pygmy-Possums In Hibernation Can Sense Danger From Fires. IFLScience. 2016.

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. Recent Development in Science and Technology: Progress and Concerns. U.S. Government Printing Office: Washington, DC, 1976.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Obeng-Dompreh S. The impact of servicemembers’ learning styles and computer anxiety levels on computer -mediated learning. 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

Kenigsberg B. Lemon. New York Times. 2017; : C6.

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