How to format your references using the BMC Cancer citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for BMC Cancer. 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. Kamien RD. Physics. Topology from the bottom up. Science. 2003;299:1671–3.

A journal article with 2 authors

1. Gallotti R, Barthelemy M. Anatomy and efficiency of urban multimodal mobility. Sci Rep. 2014;4:6911.

A journal article with 3 authors

1. Gaillard F, Scaillet B, Arndt NT. Atmospheric oxygenation caused by a change in volcanic degassing pressure. Nature. 2011;478:229–32.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

1. Krützfeldt J, Rajewsky N, Braich R, Rajeev KG, Tuschl T, Manoharan M, et al. Silencing of microRNAs in vivo with “antagomirs.” Nature. 2005;438:685–9.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

1. Smith RA. Virgil. Oxford, UK: Wiley-Blackwell; 2010.

An edited book

1. Jalabert A. Molecular Electronics Materials, Devices and Applications. Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands; 2008.

A chapter in an edited book

1. Rybacki KS, Kump LR, Hanski EJ, Melezhik VA. 7.4 An Apparent Oxidation of the Upper Mantle versus Regional Deep Oxidation of Terrestrial Surfaces in the Fennoscandian Shield. In: Melezhik VA, Prave AR, Hanski EJ, Fallick AE, Lepland A, Kump LR, et al., editors. Reading the Archive of Earth’s Oxygenation: Volume 3: Global Events and the Fennoscandian Arctic Russia - Drilling Early Earth Project. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer; 2013. p. 1151–67.

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 Cancer.

Blog post

1. O`Callaghan J. Scientists Thought The Moon Had Volcanic Activity Recently. They Were Probably Wrong. IFLScience. 2017. https://www.iflscience.com/space/the-moon-was-not-as-volcanically-active-recently-as-we-thought/. 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. [Comments on Cincinnati Airport Bond Issue]. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 1992.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

1. Reid LN. The Unintended Consequences of Narrowing Secondary Curriculum in Response to Low Standardized Test Scores. Doctoral dissertation. University of Phoenix; 2012.

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. Lee L. Bathed in the Glow of Splashing Water. New York Times. 2013;:D3.

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 Cancer
Abbreviation	BMC Cancer
ISSN (online)	1471-2407
Scope	Cancer Research Genetics Oncology