How to format your references using the BMC Ophthalmology citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for BMC Ophthalmology. 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. Ward MD. Materials science. Snapshots of crystal growth. Science. 2005;308:1566–7.

A journal article with 2 authors

1. Nesbit J, Bradford M. 2006 Visualization Challenge. Science. 2006;313:1729.

A journal article with 3 authors

1. Henikoff S, Ahmad K, Malik HS. The centromere paradox: stable inheritance with rapidly evolving DNA. Science. 2001;293:1098–102.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

1. Kröll J, Darmo J, Dhillon SS, Marcadet X, Calligaro M, Sirtori C, et al. Phase-resolved measurements of stimulated emission in a laser. Nature. 2007;449:698–701.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

1. Hu W. Fundamental Spacecraft Dynamics and Control. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd; 2015.

An edited book

1. Kryszkiewicz M, Bandyopadhyay S, Rybinski H, Pal SK, editors. Pattern Recognition and Machine Intelligence: 6th International Conference, PReMI 2015, Warsaw, Poland, June 30 - July 3, 2015, Proceedings. Cham: Springer International Publishing; 2015.

A chapter in an edited book

1. Heshmati A, Abolhosseini S, Altmann J. Financing Renewable Energy Development. In: Abolhosseini S, Altmann J, editors. The Development of Renewable Energy Sources and its Significance for the Environment. Singapore: Springer; 2015. p. 85–106.

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 Ophthalmology.

Blog post

1. Davis J. A “Hog Apocalypse” Could Be Heading For Feral Pigs In Texas. IFLScience. 2017. https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/a-hog-apocalypse-could-be-heading-for-feral-pigs-in-texas/. 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. Problems and Outlook of Small Private Liberal Arts Colleges. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 1978.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

1. Piekielek JA. Public wildlands at the U.S.-Mexico border: Where conservation, migration, and border enforcement collide. Doctoral dissertation. University of Arizona; 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. Traub J. Think Locally, Act Locally. New York Times. 2017;:BR19.

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 Ophthalmology
Abbreviation	BMC Ophthalmol.
ISSN (online)	1471-2415
Scope	General Medicine Ophthalmology