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. Masood E. Major biodiversity initiative needs support. Nature. 2015;518:7.

A journal article with 2 authors

1. Shu J-J, Wang Q-W. Beyond Parrondo’s paradox. Sci Rep. 2014;4:4244.

A journal article with 3 authors

1. Yoshida N, Omukai K, Hernquist L. Protostar formation in the early universe. Science. 2008;321:669–71.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

1. Dessaud E, Yang LL, Hill K, Cox B, Ulloa F, Ribeiro A, et al. Interpretation of the sonic hedgehog morphogen gradient by a temporal adaptation mechanism. Nature. 2007;450:717–20.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

1. Leibowitz ML, Bova A, Hammond PB. The Endowment Model of Investing. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.; 2010.

An edited book

1. Regal W. Vienna A Doctor’s Guide: 15 walking tours through Vienna’s medical history. Nanut M, editor. Vienna: Springer; 2007.

A chapter in an edited book

1. Johnson MP, Hollander JB, Whiteman ED. Data and Analytics for Neighborhood Development: Smart Shrinkage Decision Modeling in Baltimore, Maryland. In: Geertman S, Ferreira J Jr, Goodspeed R, Stillwell J, editors. Planning Support Systems and Smart Cities. Cham: Springer International Publishing; 2015. p. 61–76.

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. O`Callaghan J. The Mystery Of Knut The Polar Bear’s Death May Have Been Solved [Internet]. IFLScience. IFLScience; 2015 [cited 2018 Oct 30]. Available from: https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/mystery-knut-polar-bears-death-solved/

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. Information Security: Department of Education and Other Federal Agencies Need to Better Implement Controls. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 2015 Nov. Report No.: GAO-16-228T.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

1. Ghafoori HD. Working with Muslim children and families: A training program for child welfare social workers [Doctoral dissertation]. [Long Beach, CA]: 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

1. Williams J. A Different Kind of Dystopian Novel. New York Times. 2017 Feb 19;C5.

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

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