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

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for BMC Medical Physics. 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. Arena BJ. Outside my comfort zone. Science. 2014;345:842.

A journal article with 2 authors

1. MacBean N, Peylin P. Biogeochemistry: agriculture and the global carbon cycle. Nature. 2014;515:351–2.

A journal article with 3 authors

1. Petrides M, Cadoret G, Mackey S. Orofacial somatomotor responses in the macaque monkey homologue of Broca’s area. Nature. 2005;435:1235–8.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

1. Weiss BP, Berdahl JS, Elkins-Tanton L, Stanley S, Lima EA, Carporzen L. Magnetism on the angrite parent body and the early differentiation of planetesimals. Science. 2008;322:713–6.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

1. Fitzgerald RW, Meacham BJ. Fire Performance Analysis for Buildings. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd; 2017.

An edited book

1. Zu Q, Vargas-Vera M, Hu B, editors. Pervasive Computing and the Networked World: Joint International Conference, ICPCA/SWS 2013, Vina del Mar, Chile, December 5-7, 2013. Revised Selected Papers. Cham: Springer International Publishing; 2014.

A chapter in an edited book

1. Clover DE, Jayme B de O, Hall BL, Follen S. Global Environmental Adult Education Praxis and Stories. In: Jayme B de O, Hall BL, Follen S, editors. The Nature of Transformation: Environmental Adult Education. Rotterdam: SensePublishers; 2013. p. 89–113.

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 Physics.

Blog post

1. Carpineti A. Scientists Discover 100 New Potential Exoplanets But Need Your Help To Find More. IFLScience. 2017. 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. Examination of Selected Aspects of the Financial Management System of Goddard Space Flight Center. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 1972.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

1. Cope JA. Coastal squeeze of vegetation zones in the Los Cerritos Wetlands: The effect of sea level rise. Doctoral dissertation. California State University, Long Beach; 2015.

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. Oestreich JR. An Operatic Love Big Enough for a Vast Hall. New York Times. 2016;:C5.

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 Physics
ISSN (print)	1756-6649
Scope