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

Ruvkun G. Molecular biology. Glimpses of a tiny RNA world. Science 2001;294(5543):797–9.

A journal article with 2 authors

Watson R, Pauly D. Systematic distortions in world fisheries catch trends. Nature 2001;414(6863):534–6.

A journal article with 3 authors

Kim SW, Shimoyama T, Hosono H. Solvated electrons in high-temperature melts and glasses of the room-temperature stable electride [Ca₂₄Al₂₈O₆₄]⁴⁺·4e⁻. Science 2011;333(6038):71–4.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

van Zoest T, Gaaloul N, Singh Y, et al. Bose-Einstein condensation in microgravity. Science 2010;328(5985):1540–3.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Ibrahim RA. Handbook of Structural Life Assessment. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd; 2017.

An edited book

Blatz M, Kraus K-J, Haghani S, editors. Corporate Restructuring: Finance in Times of Crisis. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer; 2006.

A chapter in an edited book

Steensma AB. The Central and Posterior Compartments. In: Hoyte LPJ, and Steensma AB, editors. Atlas of Pelvic Floor Ultrasound. London: Springer; 2008. pp. 63–75.

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

Fang J. A Single Kiss Can Transfer 80 Million Bacteria. IFLScience. Available at: https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/single-kiss-can-transfer-80-million-bacteria/. 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. Year 2000 Computing Crisis: FAA Is Making Progress But Important Challenges Remain. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 1999.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Odom SA. Electronic health records: Overcoming obstacles to improve acceptance and utilization for mental health clinicians. Doctoral dissertation, Capella University, Minneapolis, MN, 2017.

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

Loomis G. Franz Schreker’s Triumphant Return. New York Times 2012:0.

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