How to format your references using the The American Journal of Surgery citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for The American Journal of Surgery. 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

Lander ES. Initial impact of the sequencing of the human genome. Nature. 2011;470(7333):187-197.

A journal article with 2 authors

Coulson T, Clegg S. Population biology: fur seals signal their own decline. Nature. 2014;511(7510):414-415.

A journal article with 3 authors

Lourens LJ, Wehausen R, Brumsack HJ. Geological constraints on tidal dissipation and dynamical ellipticity of the Earth over the past three million years. Nature. 2001;409(6823):1029-1033.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Peng YP, Yuan X, Zhang J, Zhang L. The effect of La₂O₃ in Tm³⁺-doped germanate-tellurite glasses for ~2 μm emission. Sci Rep. 2014;4:5256.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Tian J. Software Quality Engineering. John Wiley & Sons, Inc.; 2005.

An edited book

Dellaert F, Frahm JM, Pollefeys M, Leal-Taixé L, Rosenhahn B, eds. Outdoor and Large-Scale Real-World Scene Analysis: 15th International Workshop on Theoretical Foundations of Computer Vision, Dagstuhl Castle, Germany, June 26 - July 1, 2011. Revised Selected Papers. Vol 7474. Springer; 2012.

A chapter in an edited book

Wilson RJ, Miner MH. Measurement of Male Sexual Arousal and Interest Using Penile Plethysmography and Viewing Time. In: Laws DR, O’Donohue W, eds. Treatment of Sex Offenders: Strengths and Weaknesses in Assessment and Intervention. Springer International Publishing; 2016:107-131.

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 The American Journal of Surgery.

Blog post

Luntz S. New Tool Coming In Hunt For Alien Life. IFLScience. March 11, 2014. Accessed October 30, 2018. https://www.iflscience.com/space/new-tool-coming-hunt-alien-life/

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. Rail Transit: FTA Programs Are Helping Address Transit Agencies’ Safety Challenges, but Improved Performance Goals and Measures Could Better Focus Efforts. U.S. Government Printing Office; 2011.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Tickner A. Production and Consumption at the Hillfort Site of Mont Dardon, France: An Archeobotanical Analysis. Doctoral dissertation. University of North Carolina; 2009.

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

Crow K. A PATH Expansion Plan Commuters Might Like but Some Neighbors Don’t. New York Times. September 8, 2002:146.

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	The American Journal of Surgery
Abbreviation	Am. J. Surg.
ISSN (print)	0002-9610
Scope	General Medicine Surgery