How to format your references using the BMC Palliative Care citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for BMC Palliative Care. 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. Sagan SD. Policy: a call for global nuclear disarmament. Nature. 2012;487:30–2.

A journal article with 2 authors

1. Yeston J, Coontz R. Industrial chemistry. Chemistry writ large. Introduction. Science. 2009;325:691.

A journal article with 3 authors

1. Yu H, Tang H, Xu P. Green strategy from waste to value-added-chemical production: efficient biosynthesis of 6-hydroxy-3-succinoyl-pyridine by an engineered biocatalyst. Sci Rep. 2014;4:5397.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

1. Reischauer S, Stone OA, Villasenor A, Chi N, Jin S-W, Martin M, et al. Corrigendum: Cloche is a bHLH-PAS transcription factor that drives haemato-vascular specification. Nature. 2018;555:543.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

1. Liu HH. Oracle Database Performance and Scalability. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.; 2011.

An edited book

1. Gaaloul K, Schmidt R, Nurcan S, Guerreiro S, Ma Q, editors. Enterprise, Business-Process and Information Systems Modeling: 16th International Conference, BPMDS 2015, 20th International Conference, EMMSAD 2015, Held at CAiSE 2015, Stockholm, Sweden, June 8-9, 2015, Proceedings. Cham: Springer International Publishing; 2015.

A chapter in an edited book

1. Gas P. Transient Analysis of Interstitial Microwave Hyperthermia Using Multi-slot Coaxial Antenna. In: Gołębiowski L, Mazur D, editors. Analysis and Simulation of Electrical and Computer Systems. Cham: Springer International Publishing; 2015. p. 63–71.

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 Palliative Care.

Blog post

1. Andrew E. NASA Selects Instruments To Send To Europa In Search Of Alien Life. IFLScience. 2015. https://www.iflscience.com/space/europa-mission-instument-breakdown/. 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. Transportation and Telecommunications Issue Area: Active Assignments. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 1995.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

1. Clayton-Clark C. Academic performance strategies implemented by successful California superintendents in low-performing school districts. Doctoral dissertation. Pepperdine 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. Brantley B. These Avian Marauders Are Less Than Fierce. New York Times. 2016;:C8.

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 Palliative Care
Abbreviation	BMC Palliat. Care
ISSN (online)	1472-684X
Scope	General Medicine