How to format your references using the The Spine Journal citation style

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

[1]

Hijmans RJ. Comment on “Changes in climatic water balance drive downhill shifts in plant species’ optimum elevations.” Science 2011;334:177; author reply 177.

A journal article with 2 authors

[1]

Müller UK, Lentink D. Physiology. Turning on a dime. Science 2004;306:1899–900.

A journal article with 3 authors

[1]

Gorb EV, Baum MJ, Gorb SN. Development and regeneration ability of the wax coverage in Nepenthes alata pitchers: a cryo-SEM approach. Sci Rep 2013;3:3078.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

[1]

Amdam GV, Csondes A, Fondrk MK, Page RE Jr. Complex social behaviour derived from maternal reproductive traits. Nature 2006;439:76–8.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

[1]

Yang S, Xu J-X, Li X, Shen D. Iterative Learning Control for Multi-agent Systems Coordination. Singapore: John Wiley & Sons Singapore Pte. Ltd; 2017.

An edited book

[1]

Al-Khayri JM, Jain SM, Johnson DV, editors. Date Palm Genetic Resources and Utilization: Volume 2: Asia and Europe. Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands; 2015.

A chapter in an edited book

[1]

Ahlbrecht T, Dix J, Schlesinger F. From Testing Agent Systems to a Scalable Simulation Platform. In: Eiter T, Strass H, Truszczyński M, Woltran S, editors. Advances in Knowledge Representation, Logic Programming, and Abstract Argumentation: Essays Dedicated to Gerhard Brewka on the Occasion of His 60th Birthday, Cham: Springer International Publishing; 2015, p. 47–62.

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 Spine Journal.

Blog post

[1]

Andrew E. How We Found Out There Are Three Trillion Trees On Earth. IFLScience 2015. https://www.iflscience.com/environment/how-we-found-out-there-are-three-trillion-trees-earth/ (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

[1]

Government Accountability Office. ADP Systems: Status of SSA’s Modernization Efforts. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 1988.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

[1]

Laird EC. Training social workers to use solution-focused interviewing with Child Protective Services clients: A grant proposal. Doctoral dissertation. California State University, Long Beach, 2012.

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

[1]

Marx L. Elizabeth Greig and Jason Extein. New York Times 2010:ST15.

In-text citations

References should be cited in the text by sequential numbers in square brackets:

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 Spine Journal
Abbreviation	Spine J.
ISSN (print)	1529-9430
Scope	Clinical Neurology Surgery