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. Destler B. A new relationship. Nature. 2008;453:853–4.

A journal article with 2 authors

1. Kaasik K, Lee CC. Reciprocal regulation of haem biosynthesis and the circadian clock in mammals. Nature. 2004;430:467–71.

A journal article with 3 authors

1. Shoemaker CJ, Eyler DE, Green R. Dom34:Hbs1 promotes subunit dissociation and peptidyl-tRNA drop-off to initiate no-go decay. Science. 2010;330:369–72.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

1. Butov LV, Lai CW, Ivanov AL, Gossard AC, Chemla DS. Towards Bose-Einstein condensation of excitons in potential traps. Nature. 2002;417:47–52.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

1. Silva Elipe MV. LC-NMR and Other Hyphenated NMR Techniques. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.; 2011.

An edited book

1. Valldorf J, Gessner W, editors. Advanced Microsystems for Automotive Applications 2007. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer; 2007.

A chapter in an edited book

1. Bronshtein IN, Semendyayev KA, Musiol G, Mühlig H. Algebra and Discrete Mathematics. In: Semendyayev KA, Musiol G, Mühlig H, editors. Handbook of Mathematics. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer; 2015. p. 323–431.

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. Luntz S. Largest Survey Yet Finds Fluoridation Safe And Effective. IFLScience. 2016. 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. Information Technology: Agencies Need to Establish and Implement Incremental Development Policies. 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. Emale JM. An examination of how conglomerates impact small-medium enterprises in their relationship. Doctoral dissertation. University of Phoenix; 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. Vecsey G. The Champions In Verse, And With Ghosts. New York Times. 2011;:SP4.

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