How to format your references using the General Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for General Thoracic and Cardiovascular 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	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 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

1. Gunawardena J. Systems biology. Biological systems theory. Science. 2010;328:581–2.

A journal article with 2 authors

1. Ernest SK, Brown JH. Delayed compensation for missing keystone species by colonization. Science. 2001;292:101–4.

A journal article with 3 authors

1. Allen AP, Brown JH, Gillooly JF. Global biodiversity, biochemical kinetics, and the energetic-equivalence rule. Science. 2002;297:1545–8.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

1. Lee D, Seo J, Zhu X, Lee J, Shin H-J, Cole JM, et al. Quantum confinement-induced tunable exciton states in graphene oxide. Sci Rep. 2013;3:2250.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

1. Holzman G CVT VTS De, Raffel T CVT VTS Su. Surgical Patient Care for Veterinary Technicians and Nurses. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd; 2015.

An edited book

1. Hunt WF. Plant Selection for Bioretention Systems and Stormwater Treatment Practices. Lord B, Loh B, Sia A, editors. Singapore: Springer; 2015.

A chapter in an edited book

1. Gurrib I. The Relationship Between the Inequality-Adjusted Human Development Index and the Corruption Perceptions Index in Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) Major Economies. In: Ramady MA, editor. The Political Economy of Wasta: Use and Abuse of Social Capital Networking. Cham: Springer International Publishing; 2016. p. 47–61.

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 General Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery.

Blog post

1. Davis J. Actual Fukushima Radiation Levels May Have Been Four Times Lower Than Official Estimates [Internet]. IFLScience. IFLScience; 2017 [cited 2018 Oct 30]. https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/actual-fukushima-radiation-levels-may-have-been-four-times-lower-than-official-estimates/. 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

1. Government Accountability Office. Aerospace Plane Technology: Research and Development Efforts in Europe. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 1991 Jul. Report No.: NSIAD-91-194.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

1. Maldonado A. Incorporating abilities awareness into a bullying prevention program [Doctoral dissertation]. [Long Beach, CA]: California State University, Long Beach; 2012.

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

1. Brantley B. Still Stretching Toward Heaven. New York Times. 2017 May 5;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	General Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery
Abbreviation	Gen. Thorac. Cardiovasc. Surg.
ISSN (print)	1863-6705
ISSN (online)	1863-6713
Scope	General Medicine Cardiology and Cardiovascular Medicine Pulmonary and Respiratory Medicine Surgery