How to format your references using the World Neurosurgery: X citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for World Neurosurgery: X. 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

Bulinski JC. Cell biology. Actin discrimination. Science. 2006;313(5784):180-181.

A journal article with 2 authors

Kobayashi T, Hasui K. Efficient immunization strategies to prevent financial contagion. Sci Rep. 2014;4:3834.

A journal article with 3 authors

Aida T, Meijer EW, Stupp SI. Functional supramolecular polymers. Science. 2012;335(6070):813-817.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Debnath S, Yallowitz AR, McCormick J, et al. Discovery of a periosteal stem cell mediating intramembranous bone formation. Nature. 2018;562(7725):133-139.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Bolstad WM, Curran JM. Introduction to Bayesian Statistics, Third Edition. John Wiley & Sons, Inc.; 2016.

An edited book

Ilaslan H. Pediatric and Adult MRI Atlas of Bone Marrow: Normal Appearances, Variants and Diffuse Disease States. (Sundaram M, ed.). Springer; 2016.

A chapter in an edited book

Kulić ML, Buzdin AI. Coexistence of Singlet Superconductivity and Magnetic Order in Bulk Magnetic Superconductors and SF Heterostructures. In: Bennemann KH, Ketterson JB, eds. Superconductivity: Conventional and Unconventional Superconductors. Springer; 2008:163-200.

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 Neurosurgery: X.

Blog post

O`Callaghan J. SpaceX May Start Launching Rockets Again On December 16. IFLScience.

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. The Case for National Testing. U.S. Government Printing Office; 1991.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Manuel DG. Integrate or Innovate: Controlling Schedule Risk in Major Defense Acquisition Programs. Doctoral dissertation. George Washington University; 2019.

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

Ahmed A, Nunez P, Blinder A. From Haiti to Florida, a Hurricane’s Trail of Disaster and Near Misses. New York Times. October 9, 2016:A24.

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	World Neurosurgery: X
ISSN (print)	2590-1397
Scope