How to format your references using the BioMedical Engineering OnLine citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for BioMedical Engineering OnLine. 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 references management programs.
BibTeX	BibTeX syles 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. Smaglik P. Rewarding season. Nature. 2004;431:1019.

A journal article with 2 authors

1. Johansson LC, Norberg RA. Delta-wing function of webbed feet gives hydrodynamic lift for swimming propulsion in birds. Nature. 2003;424:65–8.

A journal article with 3 authors

1. Tuffen H, Smith R, Sammonds PR. Evidence for seismogenic fracture of silicic magma. Nature. 2008;453:511–4.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

1. Turnbaugh PJ, Ley RE, Mahowald MA, Magrini V, Mardis ER, Gordon JI. An obesity-associated gut microbiome with increased capacity for energy harvest. Nature. 2006;444:1027–31.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

1. Balani K, Verma V, Agarwal A, Narayan R. Biosurfaces. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc; 2014.

An edited book

1. Steunebrink B, Wang P, Goertzel B, editors. Artificial General Intelligence: 9th International Conference, AGI 2016, New York, NY, USA, July 16-19, 2016, Proceedings. Cham: Springer International Publishing; 2016.

A chapter in an edited book

1. Ye F, Xia J-F, Chong Y-W, Zhang Y, Zheng C-H. Tumor Clustering Using Independent Component Analysis and Adaptive Affinity Propagation. In: Huang D-S, Han K, Gromiha M, editors. Intelligent Computing in Bioinformatics: 10th International Conference, ICIC 2014, Taiyuan, China, August 3-6, 2014 Proceedings. Cham: Springer International Publishing; 2014. p. 34–40.

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 BioMedical Engineering OnLine.

Blog post

1. Andrew E. Scientists Warn We Are Approaching The Next Mass Extinction [Internet]. IFLScience. IFLScience; 2014 [cited 2018 Oct 30]. Available from: https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/scientists-warn-we-are-approaching-next-mass-extinction/

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. Airline Competition: Weak Financial Structure Threatens Competition. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 1991 Apr. Report No.: RCED-91-110.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

1. Maddirala RR. Secure file transfers using mobile device [Doctoral dissertation]. [Long Beach, CA]: 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

1. Schwartz J. Exxon Faults N.Y. Official Over Inquiry. New York Times. 2017 Jun 10;B3.

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	BioMedical Engineering OnLine
Abbreviation	Biomed. Eng. Online
ISSN (online)	1475-925X
Scope	Biomedical Engineering Biomaterials General Medicine Radiology Nuclear Medicine and imaging Radiological and Ultrasound Technology