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. Towe KM. The problematic rise of Archean oxygen. Science. 2002;295:1419.

A journal article with 2 authors

1. Flanagan JR, Johansson RS. Action plans used in action observation. Nature. 2003;424:769–71.

A journal article with 3 authors

1. Wiedenheft B, Sternberg SH, Doudna JA. RNA-guided genetic silencing systems in bacteria and archaea. Nature. 2012;482:331–8.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

1. Jones LM, Depireux DA, Simons DJ, Keller A. Robust temporal coding in the trigeminal system. Science. 2004;304:1986–9.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

1. Allerton D. Principles of Flight Simulation. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd; 2009.

An edited book

1. Gulati RD, Lammens E, Pauw ND, Donk EV, editors. Shallow Lakes in a Changing World: Proceedings of the 5th International Symposium on Shallow Lakes, held at Dalfsen, The Netherlands, 5–9 June 2005. Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands; 2007.

A chapter in an edited book

1. Peng L, Dai G, Chen F, Liu F. Study on Application of Multi-Objective Differential Evolution Algorithm in Space Rendezvous. In: Kang L, Liu Y, Zeng S, editors. Advances in Computation and Intelligence: Second International Symposium, ISICA 2007 Wuhan, China, September 21-23, 2007 Proceedings. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer; 2007. p. 46–52.

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. Taub B. Iowa Democratic Party Becomes First In US To Back Legalizing All Drugs. IFLScience. 2016. https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/iowa-democratic-party-becomes-first-us-back-legalizing-all-drugs/. 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. Year 2000 Computing Crisis: Status of Bureau of Prisons’ Year 2000 Efforts. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 1999.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

1. Detweiler KR. Exploring Discursive Interaction, Habitus, and Dynamic Co-emergence Among an Agency Leader and Congressional Oversight Committee: A Case Study of Languaging in Practice. Doctoral dissertation. George Washington 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. Roach M. The Mouth’s Guard. New York Times. 2013;:D6.

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

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