How to format your references using the The Surgeon citation style

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

Yin QZ. Planetary science. Predicting the Sun’s oxygen isotope composition. Science. 2004 Sep 17;305(5691):1729–30.

A journal article with 2 authors

Subang MC, Richardson PM. Neuroscience. Nuclear power for axonal growth. Science. 2009 Oct 9;326(5950):238–9.

A journal article with 3 authors

Uz BM, Yoder JA, Osychny V. Pumping of nutrients to ocean surface waters by the action of propagating planetary waves. Nature. 2001 Feb 1;409(6820):597–600.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Janssen EM, Droin NM, Lemmens EE, Pinkoski MJ, Bensinger SJ, Ehst BD, et al. CD4+ T-cell help controls CD8+ T-cell memory via TRAIL-mediated activation-induced cell death. Nature. 2005 Mar 3;434(7029):88–93.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Atherton J, Gil F, Center for Chemical Process Safety. Incidents That Define Process Safety. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.; 2008.

An edited book

Król D, Madeyski L, Nguyen NT, editors. Recent Developments in Intelligent Information and Database Systems. 1st ed. 2016. Cham: Springer International Publishing; 2016. XII, 468 p. 145 illus., 54 illus. in color. (Studies in Computational Intelligence; vol. 642).

A chapter in an edited book

Makhrov VP. Controlled Supercavitation Formed by a Ring Type Wing. In: Nesteruk I, editor. Supercavitation: Advances and Perspectives A collection dedicated to the 70th jubilee of YuN Savchenko. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer; 2012. p. 65–77.

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 Surgeon.

Blog post

Fang J. Young Mice Exposed to Cat Pee Don’t Escape Later On. IFLScience. 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

Government Accountability Office. Electronic Government: Implementation of the Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act of 2006. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 2010 Mar. Report No.: GAO-10-365.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

De la Rosa-Carrillo EL. On the language of Internet Memes [Doctoral dissertation]. [Tucson, AZ]: University of Arizona; 2015.

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

Saslow L. Megyn Kelly and Douglas Brunt. New York Times. 2008 Mar 16;ST13.

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 Surgeon
Abbreviation	Surgeon
ISSN (print)	1479-666X
Scope	Surgery