How to format your references using the Updates in Surgery citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Updates in 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	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

Keeling RF (2005) Comment on “The ocean sink for anthropogenic CO2.” Science 308:1743; author reply 1743

A journal article with 2 authors

Kalnay E, Cai M (2003) Impact of urbanization and land-use change on climate. Nature 423:528–531

A journal article with 3 authors

Dong X, Wang Y, Xia Y (2014) Re-building Daniell cell with a Li-ion exchange film. Sci Rep 4:6916

A journal article with 5 or more authors

Kahraman M, Daggumati P, Kurtulus O, et al (2013) Fabrication and characterization of flexible and tunable plasmonic nanostructures. Sci Rep 3:3396

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Marvin S (2010) Dictionary of Scientific Principles. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ

An edited book

Kocher T, Kole C (2008) Genome Mapping and Genomics in Fishes and Aquatic Animals. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

A chapter in an edited book

Reiter D (2008) The Monte Carlo Method for Particle Transport Problems. In: Fehske H, Schneider R, Weiße A (eds) Computational Many-Particle Physics. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, pp 141–158

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 Updates in Surgery.

Blog post

Fang J (2015) Triceratops Teeth Become Plant-Slicing Knives as They Strategically Wear Down With Use. In: IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/triceratops-teeth-become-plant-slicing-knives-they-strategically-wear-down-use/. Accessed 30 Oct 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 (2008) NASA: Challenges in Completing and Sustaining the International Space Station. U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Gunderson CA (2017) The Moderating Effect of Type of Target on the Relationship between Collective Rumination and Displaced Aggression. Doctoral dissertation, California State University, Long Beach

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

Brantley B (2016) The Image Is Fixed, but Our Lives Are in Flux. New York Times C6

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	Updates in Surgery
Abbreviation	Updates Surg.
ISSN (print)	2038-131X
ISSN (online)	2038-3312
Scope	Surgery