How to format your references using the BMC Medical Research Methodology citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for BMC Medical Research Methodology. 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. Sundqvist B. Mapping intermolecular bonding in C₆₀. Sci Rep. 2014;4:6171.

A journal article with 2 authors

1. Stewart JR, Stringer CB. Human evolution out of Africa: the role of refugia and climate change. Science. 2012;335:1317–21.

A journal article with 3 authors

1. Quinto-Su PA, Suzuki M, Ohl C-D. Fast temperature measurement following single laser-induced cavitation inside a microfluidic gap. Sci Rep. 2014;4:5445.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

1. Dai X, Savrasov SY, Kotliar G, Migliori A, Ledbetter H, Abrahams E. Calculated phonon spectra of plutonium at high temperatures. Science. 2003;300:953–5.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

1. Derbyshire E. Nutrition in the Childbearing Years. Chichester, West Sussex, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.; 2011.

An edited book

1. Grable JE, Archuleta KL, Nazarinia Roy RR, editors. Financial Planning and Counseling Scales. New York, NY: Springer; 2011.

A chapter in an edited book

1. Maiorca D, Ariu D, Corona I, Giacinto G. An Evasion Resilient Approach to the Detection of Malicious PDF Files. In: Camp O, Weippl E, Bidan C, Aïmeur E, editors. Information Systems Security and Privacy: First International Conference, ICISSP 2015, Angers, France, February 9-11, 2015, Revised Selected Papers. Cham: Springer International Publishing; 2015. p. 68–85.

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 Research Methodology.

Blog post

1. Fang J. Four-Legged Snake Burrowed Around in Cretaceous Brazil. IFLScience. 2015. https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/four-legged-snake-burrowed-around-cretaceous-brazil/. 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. Direct Student Loans: Analyses of Borrowers’ Use of the Income Contingent Repayment Option. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 1997.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

1. Culumber JJ. Physician Practice Survival: The Role of Analytics in Shaping the Future. Doctoral dissertation. University of South Florida; 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. Schwartz J. Exxon’s Forecasts, Not Past Views, Are at Core of Climate Investigation. New York Times. 2016;:B1.

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 Research Methodology
Abbreviation	BMC Med. Res. Methodol.
ISSN (online)	1471-2288
Scope	Epidemiology Health Informatics