How to format your references using the BMC Infectious Diseases citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for BMC Infectious Diseases. 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. Palumbi SR. Humans as the world’s greatest evolutionary force. Science. 2001;293:1786–90.

A journal article with 2 authors

1. Marks TJ, Hersam MC. Materials science: Semiconductors grown large and thin. Nature. 2015;520:631–2.

A journal article with 3 authors

1. Yin J, Sun Y, Ge F. Reduced plant nutrition under elevated CO₂ depresses the immunocompetence of cotton bollworm against its endoparasite. Sci Rep. 2014;4:4538.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

1. Santer BD, Po-Chedley S, Zelinka MD, Cvijanovic I, Bonfils C, Durack PJ, et al. Human influence on the seasonal cycle of tropospheric temperature. Science. 2018;361.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

1. Sehgal V. Supply Chain as Strategic Asset. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.; 2011.

An edited book

1. Warren J-D. Arduino Robotics. Berkeley, CA: Apress; 2011.

A chapter in an edited book

1. Fredriksen HH. EEA Main Agreement and Secondary EU Law Incorporated into the Annexes and Protocols. In: Baudenbacher C, editor. The Handbook of EEA Law. Cham: Springer International Publishing; 2016. p. 95–110.

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 Infectious Diseases.

Blog post

1. Carpineti A. Can Aspirin Stop Cancer Returning? IFLScience. 2015. https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/study-launched-investigate-if-aspirin-stops-return-cancer/. 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. Campaign Finance Reform: Experiences of Two States That Offered Full Public Funding for Political Candidates. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 2010.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

1. Manalo JB. Ascend Physical Therapy: A Private Practice Clinic for the Next Level. 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. Billard M. Eight Arms To Embrace Your Pair. New York Times. 2010;:E6.

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 Infectious Diseases
Abbreviation	BMC Infect. Dis.
ISSN (online)	1471-2334
Scope	Infectious Diseases