How to format your references using the BMC Chemical Biology citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for BMC Chemical Biology. 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. Petley DN. Geophysics. Characterizing giant landslides. Science. 2013;339:1395–6.

A journal article with 2 authors

1. Pawson T, Nash P. Assembly of cell regulatory systems through protein interaction domains. Science. 2003;300:445–52.

A journal article with 3 authors

1. Rustagi D, Engel S, Kosfeld M. Conditional cooperation and costly monitoring explain success in forest commons management. Science. 2010;330:961–5.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

1. Beck M, Hofstetter D, Aellen T, Faist J, Oesterle U, Ilegems M, et al. Continuous wave operation of a mid-infrared semiconductor laser at room temperature. Science. 2002;295:301–5.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

1. Pearson D, Grace C. Weight Management. West Sussex, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd,.; 2012.

An edited book

1. Sinha R, Ravindra R, editors. Earth System Processes and Disaster Management. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer; 2013.

A chapter in an edited book

1. Uteshev AY, Yashina MV. On Maxwell’s Conjecture for Coulomb Potential Generated by Point Charges. In: Gavrilova ML, Tan CJK, editors. Transactions on Computational Science XXVII. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer; 2016. p. 68–80.

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 Chemical Biology.

Blog post

1. Andrew E. One In Six Species Faces Extinction As A Result Of Climate Change. IFLScience. 2015. https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/one-six-species-faces-extinction-result-climate-change/. 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: OMB and Agencies Need to Improve Planning, Management, and Oversight of Projects Totaling Billions of Dollars. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 2008.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

1. Escalante-Guerra M. Policy analysis proposal regarding the Adoptions and Safe Family Act of 1997. Doctoral dissertation. California State University, Long Beach; 2009.

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. Gustines GG. A New Superhero Arrives to Protect the Powerless. New York Times. 2014;:C3.

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 Chemical Biology
ISSN (print)	1472-6769
Scope

Research and Writing Guides