How to format your references using the World Journal of Gastrointestinal Surgery citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for World Journal of Gastrointestinal 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

Swing K. Day of reckoning for Ecuador’s biodiversity. Nature 2011; 469: 267.

A journal article with 2 authors

Endy D, Brent R. Modelling cellular behaviour. Nature 2001; 409: 391–395.

A journal article with 3 authors

Beaber JW, Hochhut B, Waldor MK. SOS response promotes horizontal dissemination of antibiotic resistance genes. Nature 2004; 427: 72–74.

A journal article with 100 or more authors

Weber KL, Sokac AM, Berg JS, Cheney RE, Bement WM. A microtubule-binding myosin required for nuclear anchoring and spindle assembly. Nature 2004; 431: 325–329.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Machin D, Campbell MJ. Design of Studies for Medical Research. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd

An edited book

Shonin E, Gordon WV, Griffiths MD (eds). Mindfulness and Buddhist-Derived Approaches in Mental Health and Addiction. 1st ed. 2016. Cham: Springer International Publishing

A chapter in an edited book

von Storch H. Curbing the Omnipresence of Lead in the European Environment Since the 1970s — a Successful Example of Efficient Environmental Policy. In: Storch H von, Tol RSJ, Flöser G, editors. Environmental Crises. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer, 2008: 53–64.

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 World Journal of Gastrointestinal Surgery.

Blog post

Hale T. Animation Shows How An Ugly 500-Million-Year-Old Species Danced For Food. IFLScience. 2017.

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. Joint Direct Attack Munition: Low-Rate Initial Production Decision. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

McLean MR. Analyzing the relationship of geographic mobility and institutional prestige to career advancement of women in academic medicine pursuing midcareer-, senior-, or executive-level administrative positions: Implications for career advancement strategies. 2010.

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

Wagner J. Yankees Trade McCann to the Astros. New York Times. 2016; : B10.

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	World Journal of Gastrointestinal Surgery
ISSN (online)	1948-9366
Scope