How to format your references using the BMC Oral Health citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for BMC Oral Health. 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. Hardebeck JL. Stress orientations in subduction zones and the strength of subduction megathrust faults. Science. 2015;349:1213–6.

A journal article with 2 authors

1. Xie W, Ren B. Developmental biology. Enhancing pluripotency and lineage specification. Science. 2013;341:245–7.

A journal article with 3 authors

1. Raymo ME, Lisiecki LE, Nisancioglu KH. Plio-Pleistocene ice volume, Antarctic climate, and the global delta18O record. Science. 2006;313:492–5.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

1. van Rijn S, Nilsson J, Noske DP, Vandertop WP, Tannous BA, Würdinger T. Functional multiplex reporter assay using tagged Gaussia luciferase. Sci Rep. 2013;3:1046.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

1. Shapiro IM. Energy Audits and Improvements for Commercial Buildings. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc; 2016.

An edited book

1. Aram D, Korat O, editors. Literacy Development and Enhancement Across Orthographies and Cultures. Boston, MA: Springer US; 2010.

A chapter in an edited book

1. Sekitoleko N, Evbota F, Knauss E, Sandberg A, Chaudron M, Olsson HH. Technical Dependency Challenges in Large-Scale Agile Software Development. In: Cantone G, Marchesi M, editors. Agile Processes in Software Engineering and Extreme Programming: 15th International Conference, XP 2014, Rome, Italy, May 26-30, 2014. Proceedings. Cham: Springer International Publishing; 2014. p. 46–61.

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 Oral Health.

Blog post

1. Andrew E. The Science Of How These Twin Sisters Look So Different. IFLScience. 2015. https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/interesting-genetics-these-girls-are-twins/. 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. Army Corps of Engineers: An Assessment of the Draft Environmental Impact Statement of the Lower Snake River Dams. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 2000.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

1. Huang Y. Optimal control of heat engines in non-equilibrium statistical mechanics. Doctoral dissertation. University of Maryland, College Park; 2017.

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. Scandinavian Cool That Warmed New York. New York Times. 2011;:B12.

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 Oral Health
Abbreviation	BMC Oral Health
ISSN (online)	1472-6831
Scope	General Dentistry