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

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for British 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 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

Goldemberg J. Ethanol for a sustainable energy future. Science. 2007 Feb 9; 315: 808–810.

A journal article with 2 authors

Wilkinson K, Hershko A. Irwin Allan Rose (1926-2015). Nature. 2015 Jul 30; 523: 532.

A journal article with 3 authors

Duthie C, Gibbs G, Burns KC. Seed dispersal by weta. Science. 2006 Mar 17; 311: 1575.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Coleman JR, Papamichail D, Skiena S, Futcher B, Wimmer E, Mueller S. Virus attenuation by genome-scale changes in codon pair bias. Science. 2008 Jun 27; 320: 1784–1787.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Deutsch R. Convergence. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd; 2017.

An edited book

Dummer R, Pittelkow MR, Iwatsuki K, Green A, Elwan NM, editors. Skin Cancer - A World-Wide Perspective. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer; 2011.

A chapter in an edited book

Blocki J, Christin N, Datta A, Sinha A. Adaptive Regret Minimization in Bounded-Memory Games. In: Das SK, Nita-Rotaru C, Kantarcioglu M, editors. Decision and Game Theory for Security: 4th International Conference, GameSec 2013, Fort Worth, TX, USA, November 11-12, 2013 Proceedings. Cham: Springer International Publishing; 2013. p. 65–84.

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 British Journal of Surgery.

Blog post

Evans K. The 50 Smartest Public High Schools In America [Internet]. IFLScience. IFLScience; 2016 [cited 2018 Oct 30]. Available from: https://www.iflscience.com/editors-blog/the-50-smartest-public-high-schools-in-america/

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. DOD Schools: Additional Reporting Could Improve Accountability for Academic Achievement of Students with Dyslexia. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 2007 Dec. Report No.: GAO-08-70.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Kotamreddy A. Design and Simulation of 16 Psk Super Regenerative Receiver [Doctoral dissertation]. [Long Beach, CA]: California State University, Long Beach; 2017.

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

Lane MM. In Forbidden Art, Beauty and Brutality. New York Times. 2016 Jan 23; C1.

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	British Journal of Surgery
Abbreviation	Br. J. Surg.
ISSN (print)	0007-1323
Scope	Surgery