How to format your references using the BMC Immunology citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for BMC Immunology. 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. Butt H-J. Materials science. Controlling the flow of suspensions. Science. 2011;331:868–9.

A journal article with 2 authors

1. Bridson R, Batty C. Computer science. Computational physics in film. Science. 2010;330:1756–7.

A journal article with 3 authors

1. Strick TR, Croquette V, Bensimon D. Single-molecule analysis of DNA uncoiling by a type II topoisomerase. Nature. 2000;404:901–4.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

1. Lin Y, Yan Q, Kong C, Chen L. Polyethyleneimine incorporated metal-organic frameworks adsorbent for highly selective CO2 capture. Sci Rep. 2013;3:1859.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

1. Hitchner JR. Financial Valuation. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.; 2017.

An edited book

1. Lalanda P. Autonomic Computing: Principles, Design and Implementation. London: Springer; 2013.

A chapter in an edited book

1. Thomas DI, Vlacic LB. Collaborative Decision Making Amongst Human and Artificial Beings. In: Phillips-Wren G, Ichalkaranje N, Jain LC, editors. Intelligent Decision Making: An AI-Based Approach. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer; 2008. p. 97–133.

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 Immunology.

Blog post

1. O`Callaghan J. It’s Official: NASA’s Next Mission To Mars Will Launch In 2018. IFLScience. 2016. https://www.iflscience.com/space/nasa-next-mission-to-mars-will-launch-in-2018/. 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. Intellectual Property: Improvements Needed to Better Manage Patent Office Automation and Address Workforce Challenges. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 2005.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

1. Ball-Miles NM. The relationship between witnessing verbal marital conflict as a child and the behavioral anger responses in adulthood. Doctoral dissertation. Capella University; 2014.

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. Wilson M. In Chelsea Bombing Trial, a Lesson on How a Cellphone Becomes a Trigger. New York Times. 2017;:A20.

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 Immunology
Abbreviation	BMC Immunol.
ISSN (online)	1471-2172
Scope	Immunology

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