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. Baker M. RNA interference: Homing in on delivery. Nature. 2010;464:1225–8.

A journal article with 2 authors

1. Guimerà R, Nunes Amaral LA. Functional cartography of complex metabolic networks. Nature. 2005;433:895–900.

A journal article with 3 authors

1. Lisiecki LE, Raymo ME, Curry WB. Atlantic overturning responses to Late Pleistocene climate forcings. Nature. 2008;456:85–8.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

1. Pan J-W, Gasparoni S, Ursin R, Weihs G, Zeilinger A. Experimental entanglement purification of arbitrary unknown states. Nature. 2003;423:417–22.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

1. Sharma YC. A Guide to the Economic Removal of Metals from Aqueous Solutions. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.; 2011.

An edited book

1. Mey D an, Alexander M, Bientinesi P, Cannataro M, Clauss C, Costan A, et al., editors. Euro-Par 2013: Parallel Processing Workshops: BigDataCloud, DIHC, FedICI, HeteroPar, HiBB, LSDVE, MHPC, OMHI, PADABS, PROPER, Resilience, ROME, and UCHPC 2013, Aachen, Germany, August 26-27, 2013. Revised Selected Papers. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer; 2014.

A chapter in an edited book

1. Schulz H, Görling A. Toward a Comprehensive Treatment of Temperature in Electronic Structure Calculations: Non-zero-Temperature Hartree-Fock and Exact-Exchange Kohn-Sham Methods. In: Graziani F, Desjarlais MP, Redmer R, Trickey SB, editors. Frontiers and Challenges in Warm Dense Matter. Cham: Springer International Publishing; 2014. p. 87–121.

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. Calorie-free Sweetener Safe for Humans, Kills Fruit Flies. IFLScience. 2014. https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/calorie-free-sweetener-safe-humans-kills-fruit-flies/. 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. Diploma Mills: Diploma Mills Are Easily Created and Some Have Issued Bogus Degrees to Federal Employees at Government Expense. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 2004.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

1. Young AJ. An Examination of Cultures of Innovation within Esoteric Technology Provider: A Look into Computer-Aided Engineering (CAE). Doctoral dissertation. Pepperdine University; 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. Williams J. If They Don’t Believe You, Put It in Print. New York Times. 2017;: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 Research Methodology
Abbreviation	BMC Med. Res. Methodol.
ISSN (online)	1471-2288
Scope	Epidemiology Health Informatics

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