How to format your references using the BMC Psychiatry citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for BMC Psychiatry. 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. McCabe H. European public remains sceptical. Nature. 2000;405:5.

A journal article with 2 authors

1. Ueba H, Wolf M. Chemistry. Lateral hopping requires molecular rocking. Science. 2005;310:1774–5.

A journal article with 3 authors

1. Savukov IM, Lee S-K, Romalis MV. Optical detection of liquid-state NMR. Nature. 2006;442:1021–4.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

1. Ozawa S, Miyahara M, Ohtani E, Koroleva ON, Ito Y, Litasov KD, et al. Jadeite in Chelyabinsk meteorite and the nature of an impact event on its parent body. Sci Rep. 2014;4:5033.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

1. Jacquenet C, Bourdon G, Boucadair M. Service Automation and Dynamic Provisioning Techniques in IP/MPLS Environments. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd; 2008.

An edited book

1. Boone T, Jayaraman V, Ganeshan R, editors. Sustainable Supply Chains: Models, Methods, and Public Policy Implications. New York, NY: Springer; 2012.

A chapter in an edited book

1. Tuschmann W. Collapsing and Almost Nonnegative Curvature. In: Bär C, Lohkamp J, Schwarz M, editors. Global Differential Geometry. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer; 2012. p. 93–106.

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 Psychiatry.

Blog post

1. Luntz S. Evidence Found Of Giant Asteroid Impact in Australia 3 Billion Years ago. IFLScience. 2016. https://www.iflscience.com/space/evidence-found-giant-asteroid-impact/. 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. Health Information Technology: HHS is Continuing Efforts to Define Its National Strategy. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 2006.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

1. Haneef NJ. A synthesized conceptual framework for the design of user interfaces of interactive information products. Doctoral dissertation. George Washington University; 2009.

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. Rothenberg B. Djokovic Keeps Title Defense Alive, but Not Without an Early Scare. New York Times. 2017;:D3.

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 Psychiatry
Abbreviation	BMC Psychiatry
ISSN (online)	1471-244X
Scope	Psychiatry and Mental health