How to format your references using the Neurosurgery Clinics of North America citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Neurosurgery Clinics of North America (NEC). 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

Doudna Jennifer. Genome-editing revolution: My whirlwind year with CRISPR. Nature 2015;528(7583):469–71.

A journal article with 2 authors

Suenaga Kazu., Koshino Masanori. Atom-by-atom spectroscopy at graphene edge. Nature 2010;468(7327):1088–90.

A journal article with 3 authors

Oppo Delia W., McManus Jerry F., Cullen James L. Palaeo-oceanography: Deepwater variability in the Holocene epoch. Nature 2003;422(6929):277.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Fors Yvonne., Grudd Håkan., Rindby Anders., et al. Sulfur and iron accumulation in three marine-archaeological shipwrecks in the Baltic Sea: the Ghost, the Crown and the Sword. Sci Rep 2014;4:4222.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Lyshevski Sergey E. Engineering and Scientific Computations Using MATLAB®. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.; 2005.

An edited book

Ecker Wolfgang., Müller Wolfgang., Dömer Rainer. Hardware-dependent Software: Principles and Practice. Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands; 2009.

A chapter in an edited book

Mitra Abhijit., Zaman Sufia. Blue Carbon in Floral Community. In: Zaman Sufia, editor. Blue Carbon Reservoir of the Blue Planet. New Delhi: Springer India; 2015. p. 113–41.

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 Neurosurgery Clinics of North America.

Blog post

Fang Janet. Study With 95,000 Children Finds No Link Between Autism and Measles Vaccine, Even In High Risk Children. IFLScience. Available at: https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/study-95000-children-found-no-link-between-autism-and-measles-vaccine/. Accessed October 30, 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. Information Technology: Executive office for U.S. Attorneys Needs to Institutionalize Key IT Management Disciplines. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 2003.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Holman Rebecca. Music history pedagogy: Three approaches to teaching a one-semester music history survey course in accordance with the LEAP Initiative. Doctoral dissertation, California State University, Long Beach, Long Beach, CA, 2014.

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

Robles Frances., Stewart Nikita. A Church Shooting Defendant With ‘a Darkness to His Life.’ New York Times 2015: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	Neurosurgery Clinics of North America
Abbreviation	Neurosurg. Clin. N. Am.
ISSN (print)	1042-3680
ISSN (online)	1558-1349
Scope	General Medicine Clinical Neurology Surgery