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

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for BMC Developmental 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. Basko D. Applied physics. A photothermoelectric effect in graphene. Science. 2011;334:610–1.

A journal article with 2 authors

1. Merad M, Salmon H. Cancer: A dendritic-cell brake on antitumour immunity. Nature. 2015;523:294–5.

A journal article with 3 authors

1. Bakshy E, Messing S, Adamic LA. Political science. Exposure to ideologically diverse news and opinion on Facebook. Science. 2015;348:1130–2.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

1. Leanhardt AE, Pasquini TA, Saba M, Schirotzek A, Shin Y, Kielpinski D, et al. Cooling Bose-Einstein condensates below 500 picokelvin. Science. 2003;301:1513–5.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

1. Machin D, Campbell MJ. Design of Studies for Medical Research. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd; 2005.

An edited book

1. Madria S, Hara T, editors. Big Data Analytics and Knowledge Discovery: 17th International Conference, DaWaK 2015, Valencia, Spain, September 1-4, 2015, Proceedings. 1st ed. 2015. Cham: Springer International Publishing; 2015.

A chapter in an edited book

1. Kaidanovskii NL. The Department of Radio Astronomy of the Main Astronomical Observatory of the USSR Academy of Sciences. In: Braude SY, Salomonovich AE, Samanian VA, Shklovskii IS, Sorochenko RL, Troitskii VS, et al., editors. A Brief History of Radio Astronomy in the USSR: A Collection of Scientific Essays. Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands; 2012. p. 117–35.

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 Developmental Biology.

Blog post

1. Carpineti A. Meteorites Reveal How Old Jupiter Really Is. IFLScience. 2016. https://www.iflscience.com/space/meteorites-reveal-how-old-jupiter-really-is/. 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. Global Positioning System: Significant Challenges in Sustaining and Upgrading Widely Used Capabilities. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 2009.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

1. Packer-Kinlaw D. Anxious journeys: Past, present, and construction of identity in American travel writing. Doctoral dissertation. University of Maryland, College Park; 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. Kelly K, Haberman M. Another Goldman Executive Is Chosen. New York Times. 2017;:A24.

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 Developmental Biology
Abbreviation	BMC Dev. Biol.
ISSN (online)	1471-213X
Scope	Developmental Biology