How to format your references using the The American Journal of Surgery citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for The American Journal of 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	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

Bourzac K. Cell imaging: Beyond the limits. Nature. 2015;526(7574):S50-4.

A journal article with 2 authors

Bandyopadhyay PR, Hansen JC. Breakup and then makeup: a predictive model of how cilia self-regulate hardness for posture control. Sci Rep. 2013;3:1956.

A journal article with 3 authors

Mayya A, Banerjee A, Rajesh R. Mammalian cortical bone in tension is non-Haversian. Sci Rep. 2013;3:2533.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Petford N, Cruden AR, McCaffrey KJ, Vigneresse JL. Granite magma formation, transport and emplacement in the Earth’s crust. Nature. 2000;408(6813):669-673.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Dasgupta A. Resolving Erroneous Reports in Toxicology and Therapeutic Drug Monitoring. John Wiley & Sons, Inc.; 2012.

An edited book

King RB, Bernardo ABI, eds. The Psychology of Asian Learners: A Festschrift in Honor of David Watkins. 1st ed. 2016. Springer; 2016.

A chapter in an edited book

Liu X, Zhao J, Feng Z. Instantaneous Motion of a 2-RCR Mechanism with Variable Mobility. In: Zhang X, Liu H, Chen Z, Wang N, eds. Intelligent Robotics and Applications: 7th International Conference, ICIRA 2014, Guangzhou, China, December 17-20, 2014, Proceedings, Part I. Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Springer International Publishing; 2014:44-55.

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 The American Journal of Surgery.

Blog post

Andrew E. Mystery Virus That Turned Millions Of Starfish Into Goo Is Finally Identified. IFLScience. November 17, 2014. Accessed October 30, 2018. https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/mystery-virus-turned-millions-starfish-goo-finally-identified/

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: GSA Faces Challenges in Planning for New Governmentwide Program. U.S. Government Printing Office; 2004.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Chlarson-Varner G. Falls among Older Adults 65 Years and Older. Doctoral dissertation. California State University, Long Beach; 2010.

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

Billard M. Fitting More Into a Pop-Up. New York Times. October 7, 2010:E9.

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	The American Journal of Surgery
Abbreviation	Am. J. Surg.
ISSN (print)	0002-9610
Scope	General Medicine Surgery