How to format your references using the BMC Proceedings citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for BMC Proceedings. 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. Reiffel L. Sagan breached security by revealing US work on a lunar bomb project. Nature. 2000;405:13.

A journal article with 2 authors

1. Flint J, Mott R. Applying mouse complex-trait resources to behavioural genetics. Nature. 2008;456:724–7.

A journal article with 3 authors

1. Dewar JM, Budzowska M, Walter JC. The mechanism of DNA replication termination in vertebrates. Nature. 2015;525:345–50.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

1. Segal E, Raveh-Sadka T, Schroeder M, Unnerstall U, Gaul U. Predicting expression patterns from regulatory sequence in Drosophila segmentation. Nature. 2008;451:535–40.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

1. Carver RH, Tai K-C. Modern Multithreading. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.; 2005.

An edited book

1. Carreiras H, Kümmel G, editors. Women in the Military and in Armed Conflict. Wiesbaden: VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften; 2008.

A chapter in an edited book

1. Capps J, Daniels M, Sosolik CE, Marinescu DC. Friedel oscillations in a lateral superlattice with spin-orbit interaction. In: Polini M, Vignale G, Pellegrini V, Jain JK, editors. No-nonsense Physicist: An overview of Gabriele Giuliani’s work and life. Pisa: Scuola Normale Superiore; 2016. p. 45–60.

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 Proceedings.

Blog post

1. Hamilton K. Why Has Japan’s Massacre Of Disabled Gone Unnoticed? For Answers, Look To The Past. IFLScience. 2016. 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. Study of United States Government Wind Tunnels. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 1954.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

1. Atwill RL. Evaluation of water and nitrogen management practices in southern US rice (Oryza sativa L.) production. Doctoral dissertation. Mississippi State University; 2015.

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. Kishkovsky S. New Yorkers in Moscow Follow Stanislavsky’s Path. New York Times. 2005;:B9.

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 Proceedings
ISSN (print)	1753-6561
Scope