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

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

Ramchandani P (2004) A question of balance. Nature 430:401–402

A journal article with 2 authors

Todd JJ, Marois R (2004) Capacity limit of visual short-term memory in human posterior parietal cortex. Nature 428:751–754

A journal article with 3 authors

Chuang JS, Rivoire O, Leibler S (2009) Simpson’s paradox in a synthetic microbial system. Science 323:272–275

A journal article with 5 or more authors

Inoue D, Ohe M, Kanemori Y, et al (2007) A direct link of the Mos-MAPK pathway to Erp1/Emi2 in meiotic arrest of Xenopus laevis eggs. Nature 446:1100–1104

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Allen MW (2016) Michael Allen’s Guide to e-Learning. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ

An edited book

Harland DM (2005) Space Systems Failures: Disasters and Rescues of Satellites, Rockets and Space Probes. Praxis, New York, NY

A chapter in an edited book

Torres A, Cillóniz C (2015) Diagnosis and classification of Pneumonia. In: Cillóniz C (ed) Clinical Management of Bacterial Pneumonia. Springer International Publishing, Cham, pp 39–56

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 Surgery.

Blog post

Luntz S (2015) Supernovae Have Diverse Beginnings. In: IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/space/supernovae-have-diverse-beginnings/. 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 (1991) Meeting the Aviation Challenges of the 1990s: Experts Define Key Problems and Identify Emerging Issues. 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

Peterson NR (2015) Subspecies composition, genetic variation and structure of Largemouth Bass in Puerto Rico reservoirs. Doctoral dissertation, Mississippi State 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

Gustines GG (2011) Restarting Comics’ Clock Is Issue No. 1. New York Times C1

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 Surgery
Abbreviation	World J. Surg.
ISSN (print)	0364-2313
ISSN (online)	1432-2323
Scope	Surgery