How to format your references using the BMC Ecology citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for BMC Ecology. 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 reference managers.
BibTeX	BibTeX styles 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. Chapman T. Proteins on the move. Nature. 2004;430:111.

A journal article with 2 authors

1. Bienz M, He X. Biochemistry. A lipid linchpin for Wnt-Fz docking. Science. 2012;337:44–5.

A journal article with 3 authors

1. Whiting MF, Bradler S, Maxwell T. Loss and recovery of wings in stick insects. Nature. 2003;421:264–7.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

1. Ekimov EA, Sidorov VA, Bauer ED, Mel’nik NN, Curro NJ, Thompson JD, et al. Superconductivity in diamond. Nature. 2004;428:542–5.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

1. Chen CJ. Physics of Solar Energy. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.; 2011.

An edited book

1. Hepp M, Hoffner Y, editors. E-Commerce and Web Technologies: 15th International Conference, EC-Web 2014, Munich, Germany, September 1-4, 2014. Proceedings. Cham: Springer International Publishing; 2014.

A chapter in an edited book

1. David G. Open Questions on the Mumford-Shah Functional. In: Benedicks M, Jones PW, Smirnov S, Winckler B, editors. Perspectives in Analysis: Essays in Honor of Lennart Carleson’s 75th Birthday. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer; 2005. p. 37–49.

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 Ecology.

Blog post

1. Carpineti A. An AI Was Trained To Create New Colors. It Was Wonderfully Terrible. IFLScience. 2017. https://www.iflscience.com/technology/an-ai-was-trained-to-create-new-colors-it-was-wonderfully-terrible/. 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. Financial Market Preparedness: Improvements Made, but More Action Needed to Prepare for Wide-Scale Disasters. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 2004.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

1. Nevin MJ. Addressing the Learning Outcomes and Assessment Methods Associated with Participation in Student Government Associations: A Qualitative Study of California Community Colleges. Doctoral dissertation. California State University, Long Beach; 2017.

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. Wallace N. The Minivan vs. the Maserati. New York Times. 2016;:A27.

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 Ecology
Abbreviation	BMC Ecol.
ISSN (online)	1472-6785
Scope	Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics General Environmental Science