How to format your references using the BMC Obesity citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for BMC Obesity. 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. Adams J. Collaborations: The rise of research networks. Nature. 2012;490:335–6.

A journal article with 2 authors

1. Moore P, Clayton J. To affinity and beyond. Nature. 2003;426:725–31.

A journal article with 3 authors

1. Daigaku Y, Davies AA, Ulrich HD. Ubiquitin-dependent DNA damage bypass is separable from genome replication. Nature. 2010;465:951–5.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

1. Elemans CPH, Spierts ILY, Müller UK, Van Leeuwen JL, Goller F. Bird song: superfast muscles control dove’s trill. Nature. 2004;431:146.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

1. Ursone P. How to Calculate Options Prices and Their Greeks. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd; 2015.

An edited book

1. Kanaun SK. Self-Consistent Methods for Composites: Vol. 2: Wave Propagation in Heterogeneous Materials. Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands; 2008.

A chapter in an edited book

1. Chen H, Zeng D, Yan P. Data Visualization, Information Dissemination, and Alerting. In: Zeng D, Yan P, editors. Infectious Disease Informatics: Syndromic Surveillance for Public Health and BioDefense. Boston, MA: Springer US; 2010. p. 73–87.

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 Obesity.

Blog post

1. Andrew E. Sumatran Tiger Gives Birth To Triplets In London Zoo. IFLScience. 2014. https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/sumatran-tiger-gives-birth-triplets-london-zoo/. 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. Weather Forecasting: Improvements Needed in Laboratory Software Development Processes. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 1994.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

1. Belknap BM. Fostering Resilience in Beginning Special Education Teachers. Doctoral dissertation. George Washington University; 2012.

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. Shear MD, Haberman M. In Interview, Bannon Contradicts Trump on North Korea, and Lashes Out at Rivals. New York Times. 2017;:A18.

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 Obesity
Abbreviation	BMC Obes.
ISSN (online)	2052-9538
Scope