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 reference managers.
BibTeX	BibTeX styles 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. Balancing the books. Nature. 2004;428:781.

A journal article with 2 authors

1. Istvan ES, Deisenhofer J. Structural mechanism for statin inhibition of HMG-CoA reductase. Science. 2001;292:1160–4.

A journal article with 3 authors

1. Freitag J, Ast J, Bölker M. Cryptic peroxisomal targeting via alternative splicing and stop codon read-through in fungi. Nature. 2012;485:522–5.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

1. Wu Y, Wang Y, Li J, Li W, Zhang L, Li Y, et al. Development of a general method for detection and quantification of the P35S promoter based on assessment of existing methods. Sci Rep. 2014;4:7358.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

1. Cox C. An Introduction to LTE. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd; 2012.

An edited book

1. Shukla G, Varma A, editors. Soil Enzymology. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer; 2011.

A chapter in an edited book

1. Revoredo K, Ochoa-Luna JE, Cozman FG. Learning Terminologies in Probabilistic Description Logics. In: Rocha Costa AC da, Vicari RM, Tonidandel F, editors. Advances in Artificial Intelligence – SBIA 2010: 20th Brazilian Symposium on Artificial Intelligence, São Bernardo do Campo, Brazil, October 23-28, 2010. Proceedings. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer; 2010. p. 41–50.

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. Davis J. Public And Experts Disagree On Which Foods Are Healthy. IFLScience. 2016. https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/public-and-experts-disagree-on-which-foods-are-healthy/. 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. Career and Technical Education: States Have Broad Flexibility in Implementing Perkins IV. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 2009.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

1. Glasgow HL. Design and Selection of Probes for In Vivo Molecular Targeting and Imaging. Doctoral dissertation. University of California San Diego; 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. Branch J, Weiser B. Ex-Player Charged in Sale of Pills to Boogaard. New York Times. 2014;: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