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

Wadman M (2007) Moment of reckoning. Nature 446:844–845

A journal article with 2 authors

Bernèche S, Roux B (2001) Energetics of ion conduction through the K+ channel. Nature 414:73–77

A journal article with 3 authors

Lohmann C, Myhr KL, Wong ROL (2002) Transmitter-evoked local calcium release stabilizes developing dendrites. Nature 418:177–181

A journal article with 5 or more authors

Guo P, Hirano M, Herrin BR, et al (2009) Dual nature of the adaptive immune system in lampreys. Nature 459:796–801

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Obayya S, Hameed MFO, Areed NFF (2016) Computational Liquid Crystal Photonics. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, Chichester, UK

An edited book

Jacobi J (2006) Pro JSF and Ajax: Building Rich Internet Components. Apress, Berkeley, CA

A chapter in an edited book

Udugama A, Zhao L, Zaki Y, et al (2011) End-to-End Performance Evaluation of Virtual Networks Using a Prototype Implementation. In: Pentikousis K, Agüero R, García-Arranz M, Papavassiliou S (eds) Mobile Networks and Management: Second International ICST Conference, MONAMI 2010, Santander, Spain, September 22-24, 2010, Revised Selected Papers. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, pp 38–49

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

Luntz S (2014) Bizarre Gas Planet Takes 80,000 Years To Orbit Its Star. In: IFLScience. 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 (1994) Limited English Proficiency: A Growing and Costly Educational Challenge Facing Many School Districts. 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

Scuderi NF (2010) Servant leadership and transformational leadership in church organizations. Doctoral dissertation, George Washington University

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

Barker K, Secret M, Fausset R (2015) Gunman’s Many Identities in a Life of Wrong Turns. New York Times A1

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

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