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

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for International Journal of Surgery Open. 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]

Fuyuno I. Plastic promises. Nature 2007;446:715.

A journal article with 2 authors

[1]

Losick R, Desplan C. Stochasticity and cell fate. Science 2008;320:65–8.

A journal article with 3 authors

[1]

Rolland-Lagan A-G, Bangham JA, Coen E. Growth dynamics underlying petal shape and asymmetry. Nature 2003;422:161–3.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

[1]

Rosenbaum RS, Stuss DT, Levine B, Tulving E. Theory of mind is independent of episodic memory. Science 2007;318:1257.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

[1]

Minei I, Lucek J. MPLS-Enabled Applications. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd; 2006.

An edited book

[1]

Onishchik AL. Projective and Cayley-Klein Geometries. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer; 2006.

A chapter in an edited book

[1]

Karasulu B, Korukoglu S. A Case Study: People Detection and Tracking in Videos. In: Korukoglu S, editor. Performance Evaluation Software: Moving Object Detection and Tracking in Videos, New York, NY: Springer; 2013, p. 51–63.

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 International Journal of Surgery Open.

Blog post

[1]

Andrew D. Can Ayahuasca, The ‘Sacred Plant’ Of The Amazon, Help Addiction And Depression? IFLScience 2016.

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. Schools and Libraries Program: Update on State-Level Funding by Category of Service. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 2001.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

[1]

Adams CA. Impact of water management and agronomic practices on the performance of insecticide seed treatments against rice water weevil, Lissorhoptrus oryzophilus Kuschel, in Mississippi rice. Doctoral dissertation. Mississippi State University, 2013.

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]

Billard M. Made for Prowling. New York Times 2010:E4.

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	International Journal of Surgery Open
Abbreviation	Int. J. Surg. Open
ISSN (print)	2405-8572
Scope