How to format your references using the BMC Nutrition citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for BMC Nutrition. 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	Find the style here: output styles overview
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. Zala K. Careers in behavioral science. Public opinion research: measuring happiness. Science. 2007;316:1060–1.

A journal article with 2 authors

1. Tanaka KD, Ueda K. Horsfield’s hawk-cuckoo nestlings simulate multiple gapes for begging. Science. 2005;308:653.

A journal article with 3 authors

1. Brooks-Pollock E, Roberts GO, Keeling MJ. A dynamic model of bovine tuberculosis spread and control in Great Britain. Nature. 2014;511:228–31.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

1. Gonen T, Sliz P, Kistler J, Cheng Y, Walz T. Aquaporin-0 membrane junctions reveal the structure of a closed water pore. Nature. 2004;429:193–7.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

1. Ji Z-G. Hydrodynamics and Water Quality. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.; 2017.

An edited book

1. Wilson T, Charles-Edwards E, Bell M, editors. Demography for Planning and Policy: Australian Case Studies. 1st ed. 2016. Cham: Springer International Publishing; 2016.

A chapter in an edited book

1. Somasundaram J, Howard P, Reed RH. Navigating the Scholarship of Integration: Insights from a Maze. In: Rossi D, Gacenga F, Danaher PA, editors. Navigating the Education Research Maze: Contextual, Conceptual, Methodological and Transformational Challenges and Opportunities for Researchers. Cham: Springer International Publishing; 2016. p. 79–95.

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 Nutrition.

Blog post

1. Fang J. First Ever Archaic Human Jawbone Discovered in Taiwan. IFLScience. 2015. https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/first-ever-archaic-human-jawbone-discovered-taiwan/. 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. Financial Literacy: Overview of Federal Activities, Programs, and Challenges. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 2014.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

1. Zehnder DW. Host-[2]Rotaxane: A Novel Molecular Machine. Doctoral dissertation. University of Cincinnati; 2003.

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. Vecsey G. Underfunded and Over the Top. New York Times. 2010;:B20.

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 Nutrition
Abbreviation	BMC Nutr.
ISSN (online)	2055-0928
Scope