How to format your references using the BMC International Health and Human Rights citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for BMC International Health and Human Rights. 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. Hunter T. Retrospective. Tony Pawson (1952-2013). Science. 2013;341:1078.

A journal article with 2 authors

1. Perlman PS, Boeke JD. Molecular biology. Ring around the retroelement. Science. 2004;303:182–4.

A journal article with 3 authors

1. Lee D, Kim M, Cho K-H. A design principle underlying the paradoxical roles of E3 ubiquitin ligases. Sci Rep. 2014;4:5573.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

1. Wang Y, Juranek S, Li H, Sheng G, Tuschl T, Patel DJ. Structure of an argonaute silencing complex with a seed-containing guide DNA and target RNA duplex. Nature. 2008;456:921–6.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

1. Holzman G CVT VTS De, Raffel T CVT VTS Su. Surgical Patient Care for Veterinary Technicians and Nurses. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd; 2015.

An edited book

1. Nakhleh RE, editor. Error Reduction and Prevention in Surgical Pathology. New York, NY: Springer; 2015.

A chapter in an edited book

1. Manfrino RB, Ortega JAG, Delgado RV. Complex Numbers. In: Gómez Ortega JA, Valdez Delgado R, editors. Topics in Algebra and Analysis: Preparing for the Mathematical Olympiad. Cham: Springer International Publishing; 2015. p. 75–88.

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 International Health and Human Rights.

Blog post

1. Hale T. Watch Monster Magnetic Putty Devour Metal Objects. IFLScience. 2015. https://www.iflscience.com/technology/watch-monster-magnetic-putty-devour-metal-objects/. 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. Army’s Contracting Out of Laundry and Educational Testing Services at Fort Carson, Colorado. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 1982.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

1. Rivera A. A post analysis of an advanced access appointment model. Doctoral dissertation. California State University, Long Beach; 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. Greenhouse L. Justices to Expand Review of “Partial-Birth” Abortion Ban. New York Times. 2006;:A14.

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 International Health and Human Rights
Abbreviation	BMC Int. Health Hum. Rights
ISSN (online)	1472-698X
Scope	Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health

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