How to format your references using the Surgical Clinics of North America citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Surgical Clinics of North America (SUC). 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

Morbidelli A. Planetary science: How Neptune pushed the boundaries of our Solar System. Science 2004;306(5700):1302–4.

A journal article with 2 authors

Mackinnon MJ, Marsh K. The selection landscape of malaria parasites. Science 2010;328(5980):866–71.

A journal article with 3 authors

Ye Q, Krug RM, Tao YJ. The mechanism by which influenza A virus nucleoprotein forms oligomers and binds RNA. Nature 2006;444(7122):1078–82.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Polyn SM, Natu VS, Cohen JD, et al. Category-specific cortical activity precedes retrieval during memory search. Science 2005;310(5756):1963–6.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Cowan JP. The Effects of Sound on People. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd; 2016.

An edited book

Rattigan-Rohr J, editor. It Takes a Village: A Collaborative Assault on the Struggling Reader Dilemma. Rotterdam: SensePublishers; 2012.

A chapter in an edited book

Kilian T, Liesenfeld M. What is so Difficult about Self-Scanning? A Comparative Study of three Self-Service Technologies for Retailing. In: Schramm-Klein H, Foscht T, Morschett D et al., editors. European Retail Research: 2013, Volume 27, Issue I. Wiesbaden: Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden; 2014. pp. 79–94.

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 Surgical Clinics of North America.

Blog post

Andrew E. Supernova Remnant Illuminated by Massive Shock Wave. IFLScience. Available at: https://www.iflscience.com/space/supernova-remnant-illuminated-massive-shock-wave/. 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. Federal Research: Small Business Innovation Research Program Shows Success but Can Be Strengthened. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 1992.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

McCorkle WB. Tongue, Nib, Block, Bit: Rhetorical Delivery and Technologies of Writing. Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, 2005.

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

Otis J. Car Accident Takes Away Independence and Financial Security. New York Times 2016:A28.

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	Surgical Clinics of North America
Abbreviation	Surg. Clin. North Am.
ISSN (print)	0039-6109
ISSN (online)	1558-3171
Scope	Surgery