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. Desplan C. Time to pick the fly’s brain. Nature. 2007;450:173.

A journal article with 2 authors

1. Yin H, Lin H. An epigenetic activation role of Piwi and a Piwi-associated piRNA in Drosophila melanogaster. Nature. 2007;450:304–8.

A journal article with 3 authors

1. Mumby PJ, Hastings A, Edwards HJ. Thresholds and the resilience of Caribbean coral reefs. Nature. 2007;450:98–101.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

1. Mazzali PA, Röpke FK, Benetti S, Hillebrandt W. A common explosion mechanism for type Ia supernovae. Science. 2007;315:825–8.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

1. Yao Y, Liu S. Ultrasonic Technology for Desiccant Regeneration. Singapore: John Wiley & Sons Singapore Pte. Ltd; 2014.

An edited book

1. Boone WJ. Rasch Analysis in the Human Sciences. Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands; 2014.

A chapter in an edited book

1. Waltman L, Yan E. PageRank-Related Methods for Analyzing Citation Networks. In: Ding Y, Rousseau R, Wolfram D, editors. Measuring Scholarly Impact: Methods and Practice. Cham: Springer International Publishing; 2014. p. 83–100.

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. The problem of false balance when reporting on science. IFLScience. 2014. https://www.iflscience.com/environment/problem-false-balance-when-reporting-science/. 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. B-2 Bomber: Initial Flight Tests. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 1990.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

1. Gokhin DS. Structural and functional roles of nebulin in skeletal muscle. Doctoral dissertation. University of California San Diego; 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. Wagner J. Reyes Raises His Game, and His Team’s Spirits. New York Times. 2016;:D7.

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