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. Heremans JP. Thermoelectricity: The ugly duckling. Nature. 2014;508:327–8.

A journal article with 2 authors

1. Fukami T, Morin PJ. Productivity-biodiversity relationships depend on the history of community assembly. Nature. 2003;424:423–6.

A journal article with 3 authors

1. Fu AC, Raizen SA, Shavelson RJ. Education. The nation’s report card: a vision of large-scale science assessment. Science. 2009;326:1637–8.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

1. Torres-Larios A, Swinger KK, Krasilnikov AS, Pan T, Mondragón A. Crystal structure of the RNA component of bacterial ribonuclease P. Nature. 2005;437:584–7.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

1. Radzevich SP. Geometry of Surfaces. Oxford, UK: John Wiley & Sons Ltd; 2013.

An edited book

1. Huang W. Adaptive Moving Mesh Methods. New York, NY: Springer; 2011.

A chapter in an edited book

1. Rizvi NB, Nagra SA. Literature Review: Cardiovascular Disorders and Lipid Profile. In: Nagra SA, editor. Minerals and Lipids Profiles in Cardiovascular Disorders in South Asia: Cu, Mg, Se, Zn and Lipid Serum Profiles for the Example of Patients in Pakistan. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer; 2014. p. 45–66.

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. Hale T. The Color Of This Handbag Has Divided The Internet, Once Again. IFLScience. 2016. https://www.iflscience.com/brain/the-color-of-this-handbag-has-divided-the-internet-once-again/. 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 Audit: The National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s Fiscal Year 2004 Management Representation Letter on Its Financial Statements. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 2005.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

1. Porter J. Closing the classroom door: Denying the political, embracing the moral. Doctoral dissertation. University of Arizona; 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. St. John Kelly E. PLAYING IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD. New York Times. 1994;:1312.

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