How to format your references using the BMC Bioinformatics citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for BMC Bioinformatics. 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. Campbell M. Staying power. Nature. 2007;446:468.

A journal article with 2 authors

1. Hedges SB, Kumar S. Genomics. Vertebrate genomes compared. Science. 2002;297:1283–5.

A journal article with 3 authors

1. Kimchi T, Xu J, Dulac C. A functional circuit underlying male sexual behaviour in the female mouse brain. Nature. 2007;448:1009–14.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

1. Lioy DT, Garg SK, Monaghan CE, Raber J, Foust KD, Kaspar BK, et al. A role for glia in the progression of Rett’s syndrome. Nature. 2011;475:497–500.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

1. Norwitz ER, Saade GR, Miller H, Davidson CM. Obstetric Clinical Algorithms. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd; 2016.

An edited book

1. Heisig P, Clarkson PJ, Vajna S, editors. Modelling and Management of Engineering Processes. London: Springer; 2010.

A chapter in an edited book

1. Lee SP. Cosmopolitan Citizenship. In: Cudd AE, Lee W-C, editors. Citizenship and Immigration - Borders, Migration and Political Membership in a Global Age. Cham: Springer International Publishing; 2016. p. 45–58.

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 BMC Bioinformatics.

Blog post

1. O`Callaghan J. Could Life Survive In The TRAPPIST-1 System? IFLScience. 2017. https://www.iflscience.com/space/could-life-survive-in-the-trappist1-system/. Accessed 30 Oct 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. NASA Procurement: The 1973 Space Shuttle Solid Rocket Motor Contractor Selection. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 1987.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

1. Salters DD. The effects of independent reading on the reading comprehension skills of sixth-grade students. Doctoral dissertation. University of Phoenix; 2008.

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. Greenhouse L. Skeptically, Court Hears Fraud Case. New York Times. 2007;:C1.

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	BMC Bioinformatics
Abbreviation	BMC Bioinformatics
ISSN (online)	1471-2105
Scope	Biochemistry Molecular Biology Structural Biology Computer Science Applications Applied Mathematics