How to format your references using the BMC Pharmacology and Toxicology citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for BMC Pharmacology and Toxicology. 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	Find the style here: output styles overview
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. Bronner-Fraser M. Development. Making sense of the sensory lineage. Science. 2004;303:966–8.

A journal article with 2 authors

1. Graf T, Enver T. Forcing cells to change lineages. Nature. 2009;462:587–94.

A journal article with 3 authors

1. Bongard J, Zykov V, Lipson H. Resilient machines through continuous self-modeling. Science. 2006;314:1118–21.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

1. Vocadlo DJ, Davies GJ, Laine R, Withers SG. Catalysis by hen egg-white lysozyme proceeds via a covalent intermediate. Nature. 2001;412:835–8.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

1. Stegmann JP. Strategic Value Management. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.; 2009.

An edited book

1. Hudak P, Warren DS, editors. Practical Aspects of Declarative Languages: 10th International Symposium, PADL 2008, San Francisco, CA, USA, January 7-8, 2008. Proceedings. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer; 2008.

A chapter in an edited book

1. Luo M, Watanabe A, Yokota H. Compound Treatment of Chained Declustered Replicas Using a Parallel Btree for High Scalability and Availability. In: Bringas PG, Hameurlain A, Quirchmayr G, editors. Database and Expert Systems Applications: 21th International Conference, DEXA 2010, Bilbao, Spain, August 30 - September 3, 2010, Proceedings, Part II. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer; 2010. p. 49–63.

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 Pharmacology and Toxicology.

Blog post

1. Andrew E. Extensive freshwater reservoirs have been discovered beneath the oceans. IFLScience. 2013. 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. International Space Station: Approaches for Ensuring Utilization through 2020 Are Reasonable but Should Be Revisited as NASA Gains More Knowledge of On-Orbit Performance. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 2011.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

1. Brawley K. A nutrition and physical activity curriculum for pregnant women. Doctoral dissertation. California State University, Long Beach; 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. Saslow L. In Suffolk, a Plan to Keep Emergency Volunteers. New York Times. 2006;:LI2.

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 Pharmacology and Toxicology
Abbreviation	BMC Pharmacol. Toxicol.
ISSN (online)	2050-6511
Scope