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. Crouch T. Harold Melvin Agnew (1921-2013). Nature. 2013;503:40.

A journal article with 2 authors

1. Lincoln TA, Joyce GF. Self-sustained replication of an RNA enzyme. Science. 2009;323:1229–32.

A journal article with 3 authors

1. Jackson DP, Laws PW, Franklin SV. IBI series winner. An inquiry-based curriculum for nonmajors. Science. 2012;335:418–9.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

1. Zhang Y, Aziz-Alaoui MA, Bertelle C, Guan J. Local Nash equilibrium in social networks. Sci Rep. 2014;4:6224.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

1. Alexander M, Walkenbach J. Excel® Dashboards & Reports. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley Publishing, Inc.; 2010.

An edited book

1. Peleg B. Strategic Social Choice: Stable Representations of Constitutions. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer; 2010.

A chapter in an edited book

1. Santos JE, Gauzellino PM. Absorbing boundary conditions in elastic and poroelastic media. In: Gauzellino PM, editor. Numerical Simulation in Applied Geophysics. Cham: Springer International Publishing; 2016. p. 97–119.

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. Andrew E. How Shrinking Aided Evolutionary Success of Dinosaurs. IFLScience. 2014. https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/how-shrinking-aided-evolutionary-success-dinosaurs/. 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. Information Technology: Streamlining FHA’s Single Family Housing Operations. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 1996.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

1. Nuñez EM. Getting H.I.P. with First-Generation College Students: Decolonizing the High Impact Practice Movement. Doctoral dissertation. California State University, Long Beach; 2017.

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. Koblin J. CBS Anchor Bids Farewell, Then Is Asked to Leave. New York Times. 2017;:B2.

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