How to format your references using the European Spine Journal citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for European Spine Journal. 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

Doncaster CP (2006) Comment on “On the regulation of populations of mammals, birds, fish, and insects” III. Science 311:1100; author reply 1100

A journal article with 2 authors

Plaçais P-Y, Preat T (2013) To favor survival under food shortage, the brain disables costly memory. Science 339:440–442

A journal article with 3 authors

Rainville S, Thompson JK, Pritchard DE (2004) An ion balance for ultra-high-precision atomic mass measurements. Science 303:334–338

A journal article with 5 or more authors

Kosuge K, Iida S, Katou K, Mimura T (2013) Circumnutation on the water surface: female flowers of Vallisneria. Sci Rep 3:1133

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Riegel M, Kroeselberg D, Chindapol A, Premec D (2009) Deploying Mobile WiMAX. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ

An edited book

Shi Y, Wang S, Peng Y, et al (2009) Cutting-Edge Research Topics on Multiple Criteria Decision Making: 20th International Conference, MCDM 2009, Chengdu/Jiuzhaigou, China, June 21-26, 2009. Proceedings. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

A chapter in an edited book

Pitt JI, Hocking AD (2009) Methods for Isolation, Enumeration and Identification. In: Hocking AD (ed) Fungi and Food Spoilage. Springer US, Boston, MA, pp 19–52

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 European Spine Journal.

Blog post

Evans K (2016) Outrage As Norway Offers Licences To Kill Two-Thirds Of Its Endangered Wolf Population. In: IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/outrage-as-norway-offers-licences-to-kill-two-thirds-of-its-endangered-wolf-population/. 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 (2006) Freight Railroads: Preliminary Observations on Rates, Competition, and Capacity 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

Seegmiller Renner A (2017) Empathy Development Through Role Modeling: A Qualitative Study of Instructor Experiences. Doctoral dissertation, Capella 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

Hartman S (2015) Keepers of the Spanish Flame. New York Times MB1

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	European Spine Journal
Abbreviation	Eur. Spine J.
ISSN (print)	0940-6719
ISSN (online)	1432-0932
Scope	Orthopedics and Sports Medicine Surgery