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. Owens B. Batteries. Nature. 2015;526:S89.

A journal article with 2 authors

1. Ceci S, Williams WM. Darwin 200: Should scientists study race and IQ? YES: The scientific truth must be pursued. Nature. 2009;457:788–9.

A journal article with 3 authors

1. Lim HS, Rim YS, Kim HJ. Photoresist-free fully self-patterned transparent amorphous oxide thin-film transistors obtained by sol-gel process. Sci Rep. 2014;4:4544.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

1. Tavaré S, Marshall CR, Will O, Soligo C, Martin RD. Using the fossil record to estimate the age of the last common ancestor of extant primates. Nature. 2002;416:726–9.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

1. Kurrer K-E. Geschichte der Baustatik. Berlin, Germany: Wilhelm Ernst & Sohn, Verlag für Architektur und technische Wissenschaften GmbH & Co. KG; 2016.

An edited book

1. Spinthourakis JA, Lalor J, Berg W, editors. Cultural Diversity in the Classroom: A European Comparison. Wiesbaden: VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften; 2012.

A chapter in an edited book

1. Hutter K, Wang Y. An Almanac of Simple Flow Problems of Ideal Fluids. In: Wang Y, editor. Fluid and Thermodynamics: Volume 1: Basic Fluid Mechanics. Cham: Springer International Publishing; 2016. p. 197–269.

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. Hale T. How To Get Into The World’s Top University: Oxford Reveals Its Interview Questions. IFLScience. 2016. 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. Waste From School Lunches. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 1996.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

1. Maddox AL. Secondary Structure Analysis of the C-Terminus of Gα-Interacting Vesicle Associated Protein Using Circular Dichroism Spectroscopy. 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. Poniewozik J. A Hollywood Snub To a Celebrity in Chief. New York Times. 2017;:A16.

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)