How to format your references using the BMC Emergency Medicine citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for BMC Emergency 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. Pinheiro MJ. A variational method in out-of-equilibrium physical systems. Sci Rep. 2013;3:3454.

A journal article with 2 authors

1. Jones AG, Ferguson IJ. The electric Moho. Nature. 2001;409:331–3.

A journal article with 3 authors

1. Briggs F, Mangun GR, Usrey WM. Attention enhances synaptic efficacy and the signal-to-noise ratio in neural circuits. Nature. 2013;499:476–80.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

1. Chen S, Ito T, Asahara A, Yoshita M, Liu W, Zhang J, et al. Spectral dynamics of picosecond gain-switched pulses from nitride-based vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers. Sci Rep. 2014;4:4325.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

1. Spatschek K-H. High Temperature Plasmas. Weinheim, Germany: Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA; 2011.

An edited book

1. Jackson T, Radunskaya A, editors. Applications of Dynamical Systems in Biology and Medicine. New York, NY: Springer; 2015.

A chapter in an edited book

1. Poppe R, van Delden R, Moreno A, Reidsma D. Interactive Playgrounds for Children. In: Nijholt A, editor. Playful User Interfaces: Interfaces that Invite Social and Physical Interaction. Singapore: Springer; 2014. p. 99–118.

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 Emergency Medicine.

Blog post

1. Andrew E. Rats Recognize Expressions Of Pain. IFLScience. 2015. https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/rats-recognize-pain-expressions/. 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. Consolidated Education Planning: State Education Agencies’ Implementation of Consolidated Planning at the Local Level. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 1999.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

1. Angell BD. Transformational Innovation and Transformational Leadership in the U.S. Government Department of Defense Acquisitions Workforce. Doctoral dissertation. Capella University; 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. Billard M. Wrist Management. New York Times. 2010;:E6.

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 Emergency Medicine
Abbreviation	BMC Emerg. Med.
ISSN (online)	1471-227X
Scope	Emergency Medicine