How to format your references using the BMC Blood Disorders citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for BMC Blood Disorders. 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. Loewenstein G. Social science. The pleasures and pains of information. Science. 2006;312:704–6.

A journal article with 2 authors

1. Pruitt JN, Goodnight CJ. Site-specific group selection drives locally adapted group compositions. Nature. 2014;514:359–62.

A journal article with 3 authors

1. Ruefli-Brasse AA, French DM, Dixit VM. Regulation of NF-kappaB-dependent lymphocyte activation and development by paracaspase. Science. 2003;302:1581–4.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

1. Arias CF, Catalán P, Manrubia S, Cuesta JA. toyLIFE: a computational framework to study the multi-level organisation of the genotype-phenotype map. Sci Rep. 2014;4:7549.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

1. Chen K. Performance Evaluation by Simulation and Analysis with Applications to Computer Networks. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.; 2015.

An edited book

1. Hu TC. Linear and Integer Programming Made Easy. Cham: Springer International Publishing; 2016.

A chapter in an edited book

1. Stefanescu A, Ioan D, Ciuprina G. Parametric Models of Transmission Lines Based on First Order Sensitivities. In: Roos J, Costa LRJ, editors. Scientific Computing in Electrical Engineering SCEE 2008. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer; 2010. p. 29–36.

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 Blood Disorders.

Blog post

1. Taub B. This Is The First Ever Footage Of Cellular Activity In A Regenerating Leg. IFLScience. 2016. 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 Designation of Their Ames Facility to Be Lead Center for Helicopter Research and Development. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 1976.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

1. Teeter CM. Characterizing the Spatial Density Functions of Neural Arbors. Doctoral dissertation. University of California San Diego; 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. Murphy MJO. Weekend Entertainments From the Archives of The New York Times. New York Times. 2015;:C29.

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 Blood Disorders
ISSN (print)	1471-2326
Scope

Research and Writing Guides