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

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for BMC Evolutionary 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. Müller A. Chemistry. The beauty of symmetry. Science. 2003;300:749–50.

A journal article with 2 authors

1. Kovács AD, Pearce DA. Location- and sex-specific differences in weight and motor coordination in two commonly used mouse strains. Sci Rep. 2013;3:2116.

A journal article with 3 authors

1. Alexander RB, Smith RA, Schwarz GE. Effect of stream channel size on the delivery of nitrogen to the Gulf of Mexico. Nature. 2000;403:758–61.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

1. Hankins TH, Kern JS, Weatherall JC, Eilek JA. Nanosecond radio bursts from strong plasma turbulence in the Crab pulsar. Nature. 2003;422:141–3.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

1. Devolder P, Janssen J, Manca R. Stochastic Methods for Pension Funds. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc; 2012.

An edited book

1. Mark D. Beginning iOS 5 Development: Exploring the iOS SDK. Berkeley, CA: Apress; 2011.

A chapter in an edited book

1. Attard DJ. Mediterranean Maritime Jurisdictional Claims: A Review. In: Basedow J, Magnus U, Wolfrum R, editors. The Hamburg Lectures on Maritime Affairs 2009 & 2010. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer; 2012. p. 89–112.

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 Evolutionary Biology.

Blog post

1. Andrew E. Can Light Orbit A Black Hole? IFLScience. 2014. 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. Farm Program Modernization: Farm Service Agency Needs to Demonstrate the Capacity to Manage IT Initiatives. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 2015.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

1. Leak SC. Building community capacity to meet the needs of our aging society: Interdisciplinary competency development for professionals. Doctoral dissertation. University of North Carolina; 2010.

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. Pilon M. New York Mulls New Bid. New York Times. 2014;:B14.

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 Evolutionary Biology
Abbreviation	BMC Evol. Biol.
ISSN (online)	1471-2148
Scope	Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics