How to format your references using the BMC Genetics citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for BMC Genetics. 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. Morrow R. Engineering. Wi-Fi-Fo-Fum. Science. 2008;320:1018–9.

A journal article with 2 authors

1. Enemark EJ, Joshua-Tor L. Mechanism of DNA translocation in a replicative hexameric helicase. Nature. 2006;442:270–5.

A journal article with 3 authors

1. Sobolevsky AI, Rosconi MP, Gouaux E. X-ray structure, symmetry and mechanism of an AMPA-subtype glutamate receptor. Nature. 2009;462:745–56.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

1. Balch WE, Morimoto RI, Dillin A, Kelly JW. Adapting proteostasis for disease intervention. Science. 2008;319:916–9.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

1. Roeder T. Managing Project Stakeholders. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.; 2013.

An edited book

1. Kapural L, editor. Chronic Abdominal Pain: An Evidence-Based, Comprehensive Guide to Clinical Management. New York, NY: Springer; 2015.

A chapter in an edited book

1. Collinson M, Pym D, Taylor B. A Framework for Modelling Security Architectures in Services Ecosystems. In: Paoli FD, Pimentel E, Zavattaro G, editors. Service-Oriented and Cloud Computing: First European Conference, ESOCC 2012, Bertinoro, Italy, September 19-21, 2012. Proceedings. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer; 2012. p. 64–79.

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 Genetics.

Blog post

1. Andrew E. Why Aren’t More People Vegetarian? IFLScience. 2016. 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. Methodology Used in Lease-Versus-Purchase Decision for Tracking and Data Relay Satellite System. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 1976.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

1. Heitz SL. A Mindfulness Approach to Help Teachers And Staff Provide Support to High School Students: A Self-Instructional Curriculum. 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. Gustines GG. Comic-Book Heroes Drawn From Reality. New York Times. 2010;:E7.

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 Genetics
Abbreviation	BMC Genet.
ISSN (online)	1471-2156
Scope	Genetics Genetics(clinical)

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