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

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for BMC Medical Genetics. 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. Baxter S. From Caribbean to Clementine. Nature. 2000;403:485.

A journal article with 2 authors

1. Solomon JH, Hartmann MJ. Biomechanics: robotic whiskers used to sense features. Nature. 2006;443:525.

A journal article with 3 authors

1. Cramer P, Bushnell DA, Kornberg RD. Structural basis of transcription: RNA polymerase II at 2.8 angstrom resolution. Science. 2001;292:1863–76.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

1. Kirsch DG, Santiago PM, di Tomaso E, Sullivan JM, Hou W-S, Dayton T, et al. p53 controls radiation-induced gastrointestinal syndrome in mice independent of apoptosis. Science. 2010;327:593–6.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

1. Guillaume P. Music and Acoustics. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc; 2006.

An edited book

1. Köhn D, editor. Finance for Food: Towards New Agricultural and Rural Finance. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer; 2014.

A chapter in an edited book

1. Polzehl J, Tabelow K. Structural Adaptive Smoothing: Principles and Applications in Imaging. In: Florack L, Duits R, Jongbloed G, Lieshout M-C van, Davies L, editors. Mathematical Methods for Signal and Image Analysis and Representation. London: Springer; 2012. p. 65–81.

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 Genetics.

Blog post

1. Luntz S. Active Neurons Protect Mice Against Depression. IFLScience. 2014. https://www.iflscience.com/brain/active-neurons-protect-mice-against-depression/. 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. Mass Transit: FTA Could Relieve New Starts Program Funding Constraints. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 2001.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

1. Martinez K. Personal narrative: The struggles and limitations of immigration experienced by an El Salvadorian refugee. Doctoral dissertation. California State University, Long Beach; 2009.

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. Barron J. Donated Slides From the Met Get a Second Life, and Viewing. New York Times. 2017;:A15.

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 Genetics
Abbreviation	BMC Med. Genet.
ISSN (online)	1471-2350
Scope	Genetics Genetics(clinical)