How to format your references using the BMC Health Services Research citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for BMC Health Services Research. 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. Schiermeier Q. Low stocks prompt calls for North Atlantic fishing ban. Nature. 2002;419:866.

A journal article with 2 authors

1. Adam C, Vidal V. Mantle flow drives the subsidence of oceanic plates. Science. 2010;328:83–5.

A journal article with 3 authors

1. Ruthazer ES, Akerman CJ, Cline HT. Control of axon branch dynamics by correlated activity in vivo. Science. 2003;301:66–70.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

1. Ramachandran N, Hainsworth E, Bhullar B, Eisenstein S, Rosen B, Lau AY, et al. Self-assembling protein microarrays. Science. 2004;305:86–90.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

1. Olofsson P. Probabilities. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc; 2014.

An edited book

1. Castillo-Chavez C, Chen H, Lober WB, Thurmond M, Zeng D, editors. Infectious Disease Informatics and Biosurveillance: Research, Systems and Case Studies. Boston, MA: Springer US; 2011.

A chapter in an edited book

1. Smertenko A, Bozhkov P. The Life and Death Signalling Underlying Cell Fate Determination During Somatic Embryogenesis. In: Nick P, Opatrny Z, editors. Applied Plant Cell Biology: Cellular Tools and Approaches for Plant Biotechnology. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer; 2014. p. 131–78.

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 Health Services Research.

Blog post

1. Taub B. Dolphin Catapults Porpoise In Deadly Attack. IFLScience. 2016. https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/dolphin-catapults-porpoise-in-deadly-attack/. 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. Academy Preparatory Schools. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 1993.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

1. Hayes ET. Musical improvisation and the creative process. Doctoral dissertation. University of Maryland, College Park; 2012.

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. Archie Isn’t Dead. He’s Free. (For One Day.). New York Times. 2014;:C34.

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 Health Services Research
Abbreviation	BMC Health Serv. Res.
ISSN (online)	1472-6963
Scope	Health Policy