How to format your references using the Spinal Cord citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Spinal Cord. 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

Marx V. Cell communication: stop the microbial chatter. Nature 2014; 511: 493–497.

A journal article with 2 authors

O’Connor RM, Kenny PJ. Neuroscience: Binge drinking and brain stress systems. Nature 2015; 520: 168–169.

A journal article with 3 authors

Szostak JW, Bartel DP, Luisi PL. Synthesizing life. Nature 2001; 409: 387–390.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Dandonneau Y, Vega A, Loisel H, du Penhoat Y, Menkes C. Oceanic Rossby waves acting as a ‘hay rake’ for ecosystem floating by-products. Science 2003; 302: 1548–1551.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Adámek J. Foundations of Coding. John Wiley & Sons, Inc.: Hoboken, NJ, 1991.

An edited book

Klapp J, Cervantes-Cota JL, Chávez Alcalá JF (eds.). Towards a Cleaner Planet: Energy for the Future. Springer: Berlin, Heidelberg, 2007.

A chapter in an edited book

Bianchi A. Invariant Density Estimation for Multidimensional Diffusions. In: Aletti G, Micheletti A, Morale D, Burger M (eds). Math Everywhere: Deterministic and Stochastic Modelling in Biomedicine, Economics and Industry. Dedicated to the 60th Birthday of Vincenzo Capasso. Springer: Berlin, Heidelberg, 2007, pp 39–50.

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 Spinal Cord.

Blog post

Andrew D. Human-Pig ‘Chimeras’ May Provide Vital Transplant Organs, But They Raise Ethical Dilemmas. 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

Government Accountability Office. Telecommunications: Competitive Impact of Restructuring the International Satellite Organizations. U.S. Government Printing Office: Washington, DC, 1996.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Thiss PJ. Effects of dedicated academic support services on the persistence rates of California Community College student-athletes. 2009.

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

Hartocollis A. A Play Is Set in a Hospital, in Two Ways. New York Times. 2014; : C1.

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	Spinal Cord
Abbreviation	Spinal Cord
ISSN (print)	1362-4393
ISSN (online)	1476-5624
Scope	General Medicine Clinical Neurology Neurology