How to format your references using the Spine citation style

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

Barton RA. How did brains evolve? Nature 2002;415:134–5.

A journal article with 2 authors

Gervais WM, Norenzayan A. Analytic thinking promotes religious disbelief. Science 2012;336:493–6.

A journal article with 3 authors

Choudhury S, Morgan D, Uberuaga BP. Massive interfacial reconstruction at misfit dislocations in metal/oxide interfaces. Sci Rep 2014;4:6533.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Miquel C, Paz JP, Saraceno M, et al. Interpretation of tomography and spectroscopy as dual forms of quantum computation. Nature 2002;418:59–62.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Li RC-H. RF Circuit Design. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.; 2008.

An edited book

Ahima RS (ed). Metabolic Syndrome: A Comprehensive Textbook. Cham: Springer International Publishing; 2016.

A chapter in an edited book

Neelameggham N, Brown R, Davis B. Energy-Efficient Sustainable Processes by “Thiometallurgy.” In: Fergus JW, Mishra B, Anderson D, et al., eds. Engineering Solutions for Sustainability: Materials and Resources II. Cham: Springer International Publishing; 2016:55–71.

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 Spine.

Blog post

Hale T. Luminescent Bike Paths Light Up Town In Poland. IFLScience. Available at https://www.iflscience.com/environment/luminescent-bike-paths-light-up-town-in-poland/. 2016, 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. Protest of Air Force Contract Award. B-175469; Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; May 17, 1973.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Abraham SR. Using Self-Monitoring and Goal Setting to Increase Swimming in Adults. Doctoral Dissertation; University of South Florida; 2015.

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. For Many, Thrift Shops Are a Wardrobe Essential. New York Times, April 26, 2008, C6.

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	Spine
Abbreviation	Spine (Phila. Pa. 1976)
ISSN (print)	0362-2436
ISSN (online)	1528-1159
Scope	Clinical Neurology Orthopedics and Sports Medicine