How to format your references using the Spine citation style

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

Dobson CM. Protein folding and misfolding. Nature 2003;426:884–90.

A journal article with 2 authors

Mukhopadhyay D, Riezman H. Proteasome-independent functions of ubiquitin in endocytosis and signaling. Science 2007;315:201–5.

A journal article with 3 authors

Zhang Q, Shalaby NA, Buszczak M. Changes in rRNA transcription influence proliferation and cell fate within a stem cell lineage. Science 2014;343:298–301.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Dutt MVG, Childress L, Jiang L, et al. Quantum register based on individual electronic and nuclear spin qubits in diamond. Science 2007;316:1312–6.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Makishima A. Thermal Ionization Mass Spectrometry (TIMS). Weinheim, Germany: Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA; 2016.

An edited book

Lemle E. Two Bit Circus and the Future of Entertainment. Cham: Springer International Publishing; 2015.

A chapter in an edited book

Mukherjee J. HIV/AIDS Care: The Minimum Package and Scaling Up. In: Celentano DD, Beyrer C, eds. Public Health Aspects of HIV/AIDS in Low and Middle Income Countries: Epidemiology, Prevention and Care. New York, NY: Springer; 2009:71–84.

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 Spine.

Blog post

Andrew E. New Information On Nerve Repair May Bring Hope To Spinal Injury Patients. IFLScience. Available at https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/new-information-nerve-repair-may-bring-hope-spinal-injury-patients/. 2014, 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. Space Programs: NASA’s Independent Cost Estimating Capability Needs Improvement. NSIAD-93-73; Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; November 5, 1992.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Katukuri J. Relationship Extraction and Link Discovery from Biomedical Literature. Doctoral Dissertation; University of Louisiana; 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 G. U.S. Grateful to Be Part Of a Sport’s Growth. New York Times, August 13, 2011, D4.

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	Spine
Abbreviation	Spine (Phila. Pa. 1976)
ISSN (print)	0362-2436
ISSN (online)	1528-1159
Scope	Clinical Neurology Orthopedics and Sports Medicine