How to format your references using the BMC Medical Informatics and Decision Making citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for BMC Medical Informatics and Decision Making. 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. Smaglik P. Norway: Turning oil into science. Nature. 2002;417:4–5.

A journal article with 2 authors

1. Liu Y, Imlay JA. Cell death from antibiotics without the involvement of reactive oxygen species. Science. 2013;339:1210–3.

A journal article with 3 authors

1. Visser K, Thunell R, Stott L. Magnitude and timing of temperature change in the Indo-Pacific warm pool during deglaciation. Nature. 2003;421:152–5.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

1. Kumar R, Kumari B, Srivastava A, Kumar M. NRfamPred: a proteome-scale two level method for prediction of nuclear receptor proteins and their sub-families. Sci Rep. 2014;4:6810.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

1. Wiebe VJ. Drug Therapy for Infectious Diseases of the Dog and Cat. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc; 2015.

An edited book

1. Liu Q. TA-Q-BIN: Service Excellence and Innovation in Urban Logistics. 1st ed. 2015. Singapore: Springer; 2015.

A chapter in an edited book

1. Guo F, Mu Y, Chen Z. Efficient Batch Verification of Short Signatures for a Single-Signer Setting without Random Oracles. In: Matsuura K, Fujisaki E, editors. Advances in Information and Computer Security: Third International Workshop on Security, IWSEC 2008, Kagawa, Japan, November 25-27, 2008. Proceedings. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer; 2008. p. 49–63.

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 Informatics and Decision Making.

Blog post

1. Andrew E. Watch Bill Gates Drink Water That Was Sewage 5 Minutes Before. IFLScience. 2015. 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. Space Acquisitions: DOD Needs More Guidance on Decisions to Store Satellites. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 2014.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

1. Lauper AR. Effects of leadership training and networking opportunities on professional advancement: A quantitative study. Doctoral dissertation. University of Phoenix; 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. Wagner J. Asked Yet Again for Multiple Innings, Mets’ Bullpen Lets a Game Slip Away. New York Times. 2017;:D5.

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 Informatics and Decision Making
Abbreviation	BMC Med. Inform. Decis. Mak.
ISSN (online)	1472-6947
Scope	Health Informatics Health Policy