How to format your references using the Acta Neurochirurgica citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Acta Neurochirurgica. 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 reference managers.
BibTeX	BibTeX styles 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

Smaglik P (2004) Baywatch: San Francisco. Nature 427(6975):658–659

A journal article with 2 authors

Korf H-W, Wicht H (2004) The public cadaver. Nature 428(6985):805

A journal article with 3 authors

Ito T, Woloszyn M, Mazloff M (2010) Anthropogenic carbon dioxide transport in the Southern Ocean driven by Ekman flow. Nature 463(7277):80–83

A journal article with 11 or more authors

Genin A, Jaffe JS, Reef R, Richter C, Franks PJS (2005) Swimming against the flow: a mechanism of zooplankton aggregation. Science 308(5723):860–862

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Svrcek WY, Mahoney DP, Young BR (2007) A Real-Time Approach to Process Control. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, Chichester, UK

An edited book

Fabbrocini G, De Padova MP, Tosti A (eds) (2016) Nonsurgical Lip and Eye Rejuvenation Techniques. Springer International Publishing, Cham

A chapter in an edited book

Morshedian A, Fain GL (2014) Molecular Mechanism of Adaptation in Vertebrate Rods. In: Furukawa T, Hurley JB, Kawamura S (eds) Vertebrate Photoreceptors: Functional Molecular Bases. Springer Japan, Tokyo, pp 73–90

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 Acta Neurochirurgica.

Blog post

Carpineti A (2017) Wonder Material Lets Electricity Flow But Not Heat. In: IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/technology/wonder-material-lets-electricity-flow-but-not-heat/. 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 (1999) Highway Safety: Effectiveness of State .08 Blood Alcohol Laws. 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

Birtler ER (2014) Group therapy and knowledge of neuroplastic principles: The impact of health literacy on client locus of control in a therapy setting. 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

Poniewozik J (2017) Rebelling Against a Charmed Life. 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 [2].
This sentence cites two references [3, 4].
This sentence cites four references [5–8].

About the journal

Full journal title	Acta Neurochirurgica
Abbreviation	Acta Neurochir. (Wien)
ISSN (print)	0001-6268
ISSN (online)	0942-0940
Scope	Clinical Neurology Surgery