How to format your references using the BMC Molecular Biology citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for BMC Molecular Biology. 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. Jorgensen WL. The many roles of computation in drug discovery. Science. 2004;303:1813–8.

A journal article with 2 authors

1. Lazio TJW, LaRosa TN. Astronomy. At the heart of the Milky Way. Science. 2005;307:686–7.

A journal article with 3 authors

1. Gavriil FP, Kaspi VM, Woods PM. Magnetar-like X-ray bursts from an anomalous X-ray pulsar. Nature. 2002;419:142–4.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

1. Larsson J, Fransson C, Ostlin G, Gröningsson P, Jerkstrand A, Kozma C, et al. X-ray illumination of the ejecta of supernova 1987A. Nature. 2011;474:484–6.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

1. Li W. Risk Assessment of Power Systems. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.; 2004.

An edited book

1. Khalbuss WE, Means M, editors. Gynecological and Breast Cytopathology Board Review and Self-Assessment. New York, NY: Springer; 2013.

A chapter in an edited book

1. Ramampiaro H, Li C. Supporting BioMedical Information Retrieval: The BioTracer Approach. In: Hameurlain A, Küng J, Wagner R, Böhm C, Eder J, Plant C, editors. Transactions on Large-Scale Data- and Knowledge-Centered Systems IV: Special Issue on Database Systems for Biomedical Applications. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer; 2011. p. 73–94.

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 Molecular Biology.

Blog post

1. Andrew E. Drone that Traps Mosquitoes May Prevent Epidemics. IFLScience. 2015. https://www.iflscience.com/technology/drone-mosquito-trap/. 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. HHS’s Efforts to Promote Health Information Technology and Legal Barriers to Its Adoption. 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. Cordova M. The impact of a teacher training program on student engagement. 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. Koblin J. Request to Alter Opening Ceremony Collides With Tradition. New York Times. 2016;:B12.

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 Molecular Biology
Abbreviation	BMC Mol. Biol.
ISSN (online)	1471-2199
Scope	Molecular Biology