How to format your references using the BJOG citation style

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

Wu R. Making an impact. Nature. 2004 Mar 11;428(6979):206–7.

A journal article with 2 authors

Znamenskiy P, Zador AM. Corticostriatal neurons in auditory cortex drive decisions during auditory discrimination. Nature. 2013 May 23;497(7450):482–5.

A journal article with 3 authors

Verma T, Araújo NAM, Herrmann HJ. Revealing the structure of the world airline network. Sci Rep. 2014 Jul 9;4:5638.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Dennis PB, Jaeschke A, Saitoh M, Fowler B, Kozma SC, Thomas G. Mammalian TOR: a homeostatic ATP sensor. Science. 2001 Nov 2;294(5544):1102–5.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Tms. TMS 2014 Supplemental Proceedings. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.; 2014.

An edited book

Prassas ES. Engineering Economics and Finance for Transportation Infrastructure. Roess RP, editor. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer; 2013. XIII, 220 p. (Springer Tracts on Transportation and Traffic; vol. 3).

A chapter in an edited book

Headleand CJ, Jackson J, Williams B, Priday L, Teahan WJ, Ap Cenydd L. How the Perceived Identity of a NPC Companion Influences Player Behavior. In: Gavrilova ML, Tan CJK, Sourin A, editors. Transactions on Computational Science XXVIII: Special Issue on Cyberworlds and Cybersecurity. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer; 2016. p. 88–107. (Lecture Notes in Computer Science).

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 BJOG.

Blog post

Andrew E. Strange Microorganism Under The Sea May Be Missing Link In Evolution. IFLScience. IFLScience; 2015.

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. Federal Retirement Processing: OPM Is Pursuing Incremental Information Technology Improvements after Canceling a Modernization Plagued by Management Weaknesses. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 2013 May. Report No.: GAO-13-580T.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Panjabi C. Real and imagined immigrant identities in the public sphere: Representations of South Asian women in literary and television media [Doctoral dissertation]. [Washington, DC]: George Washington University; 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

Stewart JB. They Exposed a Scandal, But Merited Just a Footnote. New York Times. 2017 May 4;B1.

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	BJOG
Abbreviation	BJOG
ISSN (print)	1470-0328
ISSN (online)	1471-0528
Scope	Obstetrics and Gynaecology