How to format your references using the BMC Medical Ethics citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for BMC Medical Ethics. 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. Kerr RA. PLANETARY SCIENCE: Most-Common Meteorites Find a Home Among the Asteroids. Science. 2000;288:1714–5.

A journal article with 2 authors

1. Meyer JR, Kassen R. The effects of competition and predation on diversification in a model adaptive radiation. Nature. 2007;446:432–5.

A journal article with 3 authors

1. Sugase K, Dyson HJ, Wright PE. Mechanism of coupled folding and binding of an intrinsically disordered protein. Nature. 2007;447:1021–5.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

1. Burgess SA, Walker ML, Sakakibara H, Knight PJ, Oiwa K. Dynein structure and power stroke. Nature. 2003;421:715–8.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

1. Brodsky BS, Stanley B. The Dialectical Behavior Therapy Primer. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd; 2013.

An edited book

1. Ślęzak D, Kim T-H, Yau SS, Gervasi O, Kang B-H, editors. Grid and Distributed Computing: International Conference, GDC 2009, Held as Part of the Future Generation Information Technology Conferences, FGIT 2009, Jeju Island, Korea, December 10-12, 2009. Proceedings. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer; 2009.

A chapter in an edited book

1. Piccoli R, De Rosa N, Davis S. Novel Methods for Prevention and Early Diagnosis of Ovarian and Endometrial Cancers. In: Giordano A, Macaluso M, editors. Gynecological Cancers: Genetic and Epigenetic Targets and Drug Development. Cham: Springer International Publishing; 2016. p. 79–95.

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 Medical Ethics.

Blog post

1. Andrew E. Southern Stars: The Decade Ahead For Australian Astronomy. IFLScience. 2015. https://www.iflscience.com/space/southern-stars-decade-ahead-australian-astronomy/. 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. Head Start: Comprehensive Approach to Identifying and Addressing Risks Could Help Prevent Grantee Financial Management Weaknesses. 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. Shina YE. Youth under the care of the child welfare and juvenile justice systems: A grant proposal for crossover youth. Doctoral dissertation. California State University, Long Beach; 2013.

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. Koblin J. Request to Alter Opening Ceremony Collides With Tradition. New York Times. 2016;:B12.

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 Medical Ethics
Abbreviation	BMC Med. Ethics
ISSN (online)	1472-6939
Scope	Health Policy Issues, ethics and legal aspects Health(social science)