How to format your references using the The Annals of Thoracic Surgery citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for The Annals of Thoracic 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

[1]

Blelloch R. Journal club. A computational biologist looks at how mRNA length changes during development. Nature 2009;462:141.

A journal article with 2 authors

[1]

Miller JR, Simon P. Materials science. Electrochemical capacitors for energy management. Science 2008;321:651–2.

A journal article with 3 authors

[1]

Van Dyck D, Jinschek JR, Chen F-R. “Big Bang” tomography as a new route to atomic-resolution electron tomography. Nature 2012;486:243–6.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

[1]

Chen W, Liu J, Zhang L, Xu H, Guo X, Deng S, et al. Generation of the SCN1A epilepsy mutation in hiPS cells using the TALEN technique. Sci Rep 2014;4:5404.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

[1]

Anderson RK. Visual Data Mining. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd; 2012.

An edited book

[1]

Moustakas A, Miyazawa K, editors. TGF-β in Human Disease. Tokyo: Springer Japan; 2013.

A chapter in an edited book

[1]

Yin Z, Yu X, Zhang H. Commodity Recommendation Algorithm Based on Social Network. In: Jeong HY, S. Obaidat M, Yen NY, Park JJ (jong H, editors. Advances in Computer Science and its Applications: CSA 2013, Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer; 2014, p. 27–33.

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 Annals of Thoracic Surgery.

Blog post

[1]

Carpineti A. There Is A Rebellious Little Object Orbiting Weirdly Around The Solar System. IFLScience 2016. https://www.iflscience.com/space/there-is-a-rebellious-little-object-orbiting-weirdly-around-the-solar-system/ (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

[1]

Government Accountability Office. Information Technology: Update on VA Actions to Implement Critical Reforms. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 2000.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

[1]

Huffman KD. Teacher and administrator perceptions of a balanced school calendar and its effects on students in poverty. Doctoral dissertation. Lindenwood University, 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

[1]

Saslow L. Working to Restore Help for AIDS Patients. New York Times 2008:LI5.

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	The Annals of Thoracic Surgery
Abbreviation	Ann. Thorac. Surg.
ISSN (print)	0003-4975
Scope	Cardiology and Cardiovascular Medicine Pulmonary and Respiratory Medicine Surgery