How to format your references using the Journal of Neurosurgery: Spine citation style

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

Fields S. Molecular biology. Site-seeing by sequencing. Science. 2007;316(5830):1441-1442.

A journal article with 2 authors

Alonso JM, Stepanova AN. The ethylene signaling pathway. Science. 2004;306(5701):1513-1515.

A journal article with 3 authors

Berné O, Marcelino N, Cernicharo J. Waves on the surface of the Orion molecular cloud. Nature. 2010;466(7309):947-949.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Zhang Y, Zhan Y, Zhang D, et al. Eupolyphaga sinensis walker displays inhibition on hepatocellular carcinoma through regulating cell growth and metastasis signaling. Sci Rep. 2014;4:5518.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Dunnivant FM. Environmental Laboratory Exercises for Instrumental Analysis and Environmental Chemistry. John Wiley & Sons, Inc.; 2004.

An edited book

Glăveanu VP, Tanggaard L, Wegener C, eds. Creativity — A New Vocabulary. Palgrave Macmillan UK; 2016.

A chapter in an edited book

Tuniz C, Gillespie R, Jones C. Stairway to Heaven: la scala di corallo. In: Gillespie R, Jones C, eds. I Lettori Di Ossa. Springer; 2010:57-68.

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 Journal of Neurosurgery: Spine.

Blog post

Andrews R. Scientists Turn Captured Carbon Emissions Into Fuel Pellets. IFLScience. October 14, 2015. Accessed October 30, 2018. https://www.iflscience.com/environment/scientists-turn-captured-carbon-emissions-fuel-pellets/

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. Weather Forecasting: NWS Has Not Demonstrated That New Processing System Will Improve Mission Effectiveness. U.S. Government Printing Office; 1996.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Best ML. Assistant Principals and Reform: A Socialization Paradox? Doctoral dissertation. University of North Carolina; 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

Pérez-Peña R, Schmidt MS. Woman Is Beheaded in Attack at Oklahoma Food Plant. New York Times. September 27, 2014:A12.

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	Journal of Neurosurgery: Spine
Abbreviation	J. Neurosurg. Spine
ISSN (print)	1547-5654
ISSN (online)	1547-5646
Scope	General Medicine