How to format your references using the BMC Pediatrics citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for BMC Pediatrics. 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. Smaglik P. Battling the brain drain. Nature. 2002;415:3.

A journal article with 2 authors

1. van den Heuvel MGL, Dekker C. Motor proteins at work for nanotechnology. Science. 2007;317:333–6.

A journal article with 3 authors

1. Dixon E, Shapiro A, Lu Z-L. Scale-invariance in brightness illusions implicates object-level visual processing. Sci Rep. 2014;4:3900.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

1. Volpert M, Mangum JE, Jamsai D, D’Sylva R, O’Bryan MK, McIntyre P. Eukaryotic expression, purification and structure/function analysis of native, recombinant CRISP3 from human and mouse. Sci Rep. 2014;4:4217.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

1. Center for Chemical Process Safety. Guidelines for Initiating Events and Independent Protection Layers in Layer of Protection Analysis. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.; 2015.

An edited book

1. Chakravarthi VS, Shirur YJM, Prasad R, editors. Proceedings of International Conference on VLSI, Communication, Advanced Devices, Signals & Systems and Networking (VCASAN-2013). New Delhi: Springer India; 2013.

A chapter in an edited book

1. Wen J-C, Huang S-Y, Lin C-F, Hsu C-C, Chen W-N. Typhoon Morakot and Institutional Changes in Taiwan. In: Shaw R, editor. Disaster Recovery: Used or Misused Development Opportunity. Tokyo: Springer Japan; 2014. p. 61–75.

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 Pediatrics.

Blog post

1. Davis J. Squirrel Leprosy Experiment To Take Place In Southern England. IFLScience. 2016. https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/squirrel-leprosy-experiment-take-place-southern-england/. 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. Better Management Needed in Automating the Federal Judiciary. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 1981.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

1. Schaper P. Meaning making: Learning in whistle blowing. Doctoral dissertation. George Washington University; 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. Gorman J. A Flightless Bird Grounded by DNA. New York Times. 2017;:D3.

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 Pediatrics
Abbreviation	BMC Pediatr.
ISSN (online)	1471-2431
Scope	Pediatrics, Perinatology, and Child Health