How to format your references using the BMC Complementary and Alternative Medicine citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for BMC Complementary and Alternative Medicine. 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. Kreeger K. From bench to bedside. Nature. 2003;424:1090–1.

A journal article with 2 authors

1. Ekström G, Stark CP. Simple scaling of catastrophic landslide dynamics. Science. 2013;339:1416–9.

A journal article with 3 authors

1. Shi Y, Tyson GW, DeLong EF. Metatranscriptomics reveals unique microbial small RNAs in the ocean’s water column. Nature. 2009;459:266–9.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

1. Bella A, Shaw M, Ray S, Ryadnov MG. Filming protein fibrillogenesis in real time. Sci Rep. 2014;4:7529.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

1. McFedries P. Twitter Tips, Tricks, and Tweets. Indianapolis, IN, USA: Wiley Publishing, Inc.; 2010.

An edited book

1. Les Z. Shape Understanding System: The First Steps toward the Visual Thinking Machines. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer; 2008.

A chapter in an edited book

1. Rehm G, Uszkoreit H. Kieliteknologian suomen kielen tuki. In: Rehm G, Uszkoreit H, editors. The Finnish Language in the Digital Age. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer; 2012. p. 17–34.

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 Complementary and Alternative Medicine.

Blog post

1. Andrew E. Scientists Translate Penguin Calls. IFLScience. 2014. https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/scientists-translate-penguin-calls/. 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. [Questions Concerning the Implementation of the Student Loan Consolidation and Technical Amendments Act of 1983]. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 1984.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

1. Ramey JD. A Case Study: Achievement Studies of Persistent, Transitional, and Transient Populations within the Blitz Program Model at a Large Midwestern Elementary School. Doctoral dissertation. Lindenwood University; 2013.

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. de la MERCED MJ. ‘Trump Bump’ Gives President a Win in His First 100 Days. New York Times. 2017;:B1.

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 Complementary and Alternative Medicine
Abbreviation	BMC Complement. Altern. Med.
ISSN (online)	1472-6882
Scope	General Medicine Complementary and alternative medicine