How to format your references using the BMC Nursing citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for BMC Nursing. 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. Padma TV. Strength in numbers. Nature. 2005;436:492–3.

A journal article with 2 authors

1. Kinchen JM, Ravichandran KS. Identification of two evolutionarily conserved genes regulating processing of engulfed apoptotic cells. Nature. 2010;464:778–82.

A journal article with 3 authors

1. Gubbins D, Jones AL, Finlay CC. Fall in Earth’s magnetic field is erratic. Science. 2006;312:900–2.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

1. Körtzinger A, Schimanski J, Send U, Wallace D. The ocean takes a deep breath. Science. 2004;306:1337.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

1. McCurley L. Professional Rope Access. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc; 2016.

An edited book

1. Tuschmann W. Moduli Spaces of Riemannian Metrics. Basel: Springer; 2015.

A chapter in an edited book

1. Alexandrino MM, Bettiol RG. Polar Foliations. In: Bettiol RG, editor. Lie Groups and Geometric Aspects of Isometric Actions. Cham: Springer International Publishing; 2015. p. 109–37.

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 Nursing.

Blog post

1. Taub B. Huge Variation In Rattlesnake Venom Reveals Intense Arms Race Against Squirrels. IFLScience. 2016. https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/huge-variation-rattlesnake-venom-reveals-intense-arms-race-against-squirrels/. 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. Aircraft Maintenance: Air Force Transferred and Eliminated Tasks to Address Funding Shortfalls. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 1990.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

1. Wheatley BA. Leadership styles of healthcare executives: Comparisons of transformational, transactional, and passive-avoidant styles. Doctoral dissertation. Northcentral University; 2010.

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. Reisner N, Fink S, Yee V. 8 Die After Power Fails at Care Center in Florida. New York Times. 2017;:A1.

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 Nursing
Abbreviation	BMC Nurs.
ISSN (online)	1472-6955
Scope	General Nursing