How to format your references using the The Spine Journal citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for The Spine Journal. 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]

Nelson J. Solar energy. Solar cells by self-assembly? Science 2001;293:1059–60.

A journal article with 2 authors

[1]

Chi AS, Bernstein BE. Developmental biology. Pluripotent chromatin state. Science 2009;323:220–1.

A journal article with 3 authors

[1]

Maduwage K, O’Leary MA, Isbister GK. Diagnosis of snake envenomation using a simple phospholipase A2 assay. Sci Rep 2014;4:4827.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

[1]

Choudhary C, Kumar C, Gnad F, Nielsen ML, Rehman M, Walther TC, et al. Lysine acetylation targets protein complexes and co-regulates major cellular functions. Science 2009;325:834–40.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

[1]

Wing C. How Your House Works. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.; 2012.

An edited book

[1]

Bodlaender HL, Downey R, Fomin FV, Marx D, editors. The Multivariate Algorithmic Revolution and Beyond: Essays Dedicated to Michael R. Fellows on the Occasion of His 60th Birthday. vol. 7370. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer; 2012.

A chapter in an edited book

[1]

Wolf MP, Koons JR. Interests, Embodiment, and Constraint by the World. In: Koons JR, editor. The Normative and the Natural, Cham: Springer International Publishing; 2016, p. 139–77.

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 Spine Journal.

Blog post

[1]

Andrew E. The Search of Life Beneath the Ice: Why we’re Going Back to Europa. IFLScience 2015.

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. Child Support Enforcement: Leadership Essential to Implementing Effective Automated Systems. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 1997.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

[1]

Nesbit PR. Uninhabited Aerial Vehicles and Structure from Motion: A fresh approach to photogrammetry. Doctoral dissertation. California State University, Long Beach, 2014.

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]

Verghese A. Baby Steps. New York Times 2017:BR16.

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 Spine Journal
Abbreviation	Spine J.
ISSN (print)	1529-9430
Scope	Clinical Neurology Surgery