How to format your references using the Surgery Today citation style

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

1. Roberge A. Astronomy: Hurling comets around a planetary nursery. Nature. 2014;514:440–1.

A journal article with 2 authors

1. Thébault E, Fontaine C. Stability of ecological communities and the architecture of mutualistic and trophic networks. Science. 2010;329:853–6.

A journal article with 3 authors

1. Okabe Y, Sano T, Nagata S. Regulation of the innate immune response by threonine-phosphatase of Eyes absent. Nature. 2009;460:520–4.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

1. Sutton MD, Briggs DEG, Siveter DJ, Siveter DJ. Silurian brachiopods with soft-tissue preservation. Nature. 2005;436:1013–5.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

1. Elias H-G. Macromolecules. D-69451 Weinheim, Germany: Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH; 2006.

An edited book

1. Alexandrov VN, Albada GD van, Sloot PMA, Dongarra J, editors. Computational Science – ICCS 2006: 6th International Conference, Reading, UK, May 28-31, 2006. Proceedings, Part III. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer; 2006.

A chapter in an edited book

1. Boehlke J, Osińska M. Concept and Inference Based on Experiments in Economics. In: Nermend K, Łatuszyńska M, editors. Selected Issues in Experimental Economics: Proceedings of the 2015 Computational Methods in Experimental Economics (CMEE) Conference. Cham: Springer International Publishing; 2016. p. 37–56.

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 Surgery Today.

Blog post

1. Luntz S. New Theory Could Rewrite Our Understanding Of Volcanoes [Internet]. IFLScience. IFLScience; 2014 [cited 2018 Oct 30]. Available from: https://www.iflscience.com/physics/volcanic-forces-not-what-you-were-taught/

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

1. Government Accountability Office. Gender Equity: Men’s and Women’s Participation in Higher Education. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 2000 Dec. Report No.: GAO-01-128.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

1. Gleason R. Nanosphere lithography applied to magnetic thin films [Doctoral dissertation]. [Long Beach, CA]: California State University, Long Beach; 2013.

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

1. Feeney K. A Cafe That Caters. New York Times. 2009 Jan 18;NJ9.

In-text citations

References should be cited in the text by sequential numbers in square brackets:

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	Surgery Today
Abbreviation	Surg. Today
ISSN (print)	0941-1291
ISSN (online)	1436-2813
Scope	General Medicine Surgery