How to format your references using the The American Surgeon citation style

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

Dalcanton JJ. 18 years of science with the Hubble Space Telescope. Nature. 2009 Jan 1;457(7225):41–50.

A journal article with 2 authors

Goldsby DL, Tullis TE. Flash heating leads to low frictional strength of crustal rocks at earthquake slip rates. Science. 2011 Oct 14;334(6053):216–8.

A journal article with 3 authors

Barwick B, Flannigan DJ, Zewail AH. Photon-induced near-field electron microscopy. Nature. 2009 Dec 17;462(7275):902–6.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Kato YK, Myers RC, Gossard AC, Awschalom DD. Observation of the spin Hall effect in semiconductors. Science. 2004 Dec 10;306(5703):1910–3.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Reiman J. As Free and as Just as Possible. Oxford, UK: Wiley-Blackwell; 2012.

An edited book

Valavanis KP, editor. Advances in Unmanned Aerial Vehicles: State of the Art and the Road to Autonomy. Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands; 2007. XXIV, 544 p. (Intelligent Systems, Control and Automation: Science and Engineering; vol. 33).

A chapter in an edited book

Ishikawa F, Saito Y, Yoshida S, Harada M, Shultz LD. The Differentiative and Regenerative Properties of Human Hematopoietic Stem/Progenitor cells in NOD-SCID/IL2rγnull Mice. In: Nomura T, Watanabe T, Habu S, editors. Humanized Mice. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer; 2008. p. 87–94. (Compans RW, Cooper MD, Honjo T, Koprowski H, Melchers F, Oldstone MBA, et al., editors. Current Topics in Microbiology and Immunology).

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 Surgeon.

Blog post

Andrew E. IFLScience. IFLScience; 2015 [cited 2018 Oct 30]. In a Water-Scarce West of the Future, Who Will be Hit Hardest? Available from: https://www.iflscience.com/environment/water-scarce-west-future-who-will-be-hit-hardest-0/

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. 2020 Census: Prioritized Information Technology Research and Testing Is Needed for Census Design Decisions. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 2014 Apr. Report No.: GAO-14-389.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Beattie LJ. Meeting the Needs of Low Income Students [Doctoral dissertation]. [Edwardsville, IL]: Southern Illinois University; 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

Vecsey G. Granderson’s Catches Add to October Lore. New York Times. 2011 Oct 6;B15.

In-text citations

References should be cited in the text by sequential numbers in parentheses:

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 Surgeon
ISSN (print)	0003-1348
ISSN (online)	1555-9823
Scope