How to format your references using the International Surgery citation style

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

Noble D. Modeling the heart--from genes to cells to the whole organ. Science. 2002 Mar 1;295(5560):1678–82.

A journal article with 2 authors

Nimmo F, Pappalardo RT. Diapir-induced reorientation of Saturn’s moon Enceladus. Nature. 2006 Jun 1;441(7093):614–6.

A journal article with 3 authors

Zarrinpar A, Park SH, Lim WA. Optimization of specificity in a cellular protein interaction network by negative selection. Nature. 2003 Dec 11;426(6967):676–80.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Xu GH, Wang YK, Sheng GP, Mu Y, Yu HQ. An MFC-based online monitoring and alert system for activated sludge process. Sci Rep. 2014 Oct 27;4:6779.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Shamsuddin M. Physical Chemistry of Metallurgical Processes. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc; 2016.

An edited book

Serdyukov P, Braslavski P, Kuznetsov SO, Kamps J, Rüger S, Agichtein E, et al., editors. Advances in Information Retrieval: 35th European Conference on IR Research, ECIR 2013, Moscow, Russia, March 24-27, 2013. Proceedings. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer; 2013. XXVI, 894 p. 198 illus. (Lecture Notes in Computer Science; vol. 7814).

A chapter in an edited book

Fowler MJF. Declassified Intelligence Satellite Photographs. In: Hanson WS, Oltean IA, editors. Archaeology from Historical Aerial and Satellite Archives. New York, NY: Springer; 2013. p. 47–66.

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 Surgery.

Blog post

Andrew D. This Photo Of Someone’s Shiny Legs Is An Illusion, And We’re Freaking Out [Internet]. IFLScience. IFLScience; 2016 [cited 2018 Oct 30]. Available from: https://www.iflscience.com/editors-blog/this-photo-of-someones-shiny-legs-is-an-illusion-and-were-freaking-out/

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. Highway Fund Audit. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 1996 Nov. Report No.: AIMD-97-14R.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Pobat M. It is all in the Mind of the Manager—Using Cognitive Complexity to Explore the Global Mindset—A Comparative Case Study [Doctoral dissertation]. [Washington, DC]: George Washington University; 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

Kelly C. One High School Band and the Changes It Wrought. New York Times. 2011 Oct 9;A31B.

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	International Surgery
Abbreviation	Int. Surg.
ISSN (print)	0020-8868
Scope	Surgery