How to format your references using the BMC Physiology citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for BMC Physiology. 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. Yan H. Materials science. Nucleic acid nanotechnology. Science. 2004;306:2048–9.

A journal article with 2 authors

1. Chang JB, Ferrell JE Jr. Mitotic trigger waves and the spatial coordination of the Xenopus cell cycle. Nature. 2013;500:603–7.

A journal article with 3 authors

1. Moore JD, Kirk JA, Hunt T. Unmasking the S-phase-promoting potential of cyclin B1. Science. 2003;300:987–90.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

1. Vander Weele CM, Siciliano CA, Matthews GA, Namburi P, Izadmehr EM, Espinel IC, et al. Dopamine enhances signal-to-noise ratio in cortical-brainstem encoding of aversive stimuli. Nature. 2018;563:397–401.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

1. Bakshi AB, Prasanna VK. Architecture-Independent Programming for Wireless Sensor Networks. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.; 2007.

An edited book

1. Eckert C, Katsikas SK, Pernul G, editors. Trust, Privacy, and Security in Digital Business: 11th International Conference, TrustBus 2014, Munich, Germany, September 2-3, 2014. Proceedings. Cham: Springer International Publishing; 2014.

A chapter in an edited book

1. Yan J, Lv T, Guo L, Zhang Z. Credibility Evaluation of Information Service Platform Based on SOA-Extended. In: Lin S, Huang X, editors. Advanced Research on Computer Education, Simulation and Modeling: International Conference, CESM 2011, Wuhan, China, June 18-19, 2011. Proceedings, Part II. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer; 2011. p. 26–32.

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 Physiology.

Blog post

1. Fang J. Manhattan Flood Risk Up 20-Fold Since 19th Century. IFLScience. 2014. 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. Space Transportation System. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 1974.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

1. Oldham CA. An investigation of genre and grammatical positioning in an online community. 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. Crow K. Which Fork Should You Use When Eating Your Words? New York Times. 2000;:146.

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 Physiology
Abbreviation	BMC Physiol.
ISSN (online)	1472-6793
Scope	Physiology General Medicine Physiology (medical)

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