How to format your references using the BMC Public Health citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for BMC Public Health. 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. Edwards RL. Climate change. Ice age rhythms. Science. 2010;327:790–1.

A journal article with 2 authors

1. Stark CP, Stieglitz M. Hydrology. The sting in a fractal tail. Nature. 2000;403:493, 495.

A journal article with 3 authors

1. Thomas AM, Nadeau RM, Bürgmann R. Tremor-tide correlations and near-lithostatic pore pressure on the deep San Andreas fault. Nature. 2009;462:1048–51.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

1. Giraldez AJ, Cinalli RM, Glasner ME, Enright AJ, Thomson JM, Baskerville S, et al. MicroRNAs regulate brain morphogenesis in zebrafish. Science. 2005;308:833–8.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

1. Stokes G. A Practical Guide to the Wiring Regulations. Oxford, UK: Blackwell Science Ltd; 2008.

An edited book

1. Zheng X. Stock Market Modeling and Forecasting: A System Adaptation Approach. London: Springer; 2013.

A chapter in an edited book

1. Lassiter D. The Algebraic Structure of Amounts: Evidence from Comparatives. In: Icard T, Muskens R, editors. Interfaces: Explorations in Logic, Language and Computation: ESSLLI 2008 and ESSLLI 2009 Student Sessions. Selected Papers. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer; 2010. p. 38–56.

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 Public Health.

Blog post

1. Fang J. Venus Express Prepares for its Summer Plunge. IFLScience. 2014. https://www.iflscience.com/space/venus-express-prepares-its-summer-plunge/. 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. Aviation Security: Registered Traveler Program Policy and Implementation Issues. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 2002.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

1. Lewis SS. Identification of Stress-Responsive Genes in the Early Larval Stage of the Fathead Minnow Pimephales promelas. Doctoral dissertation. University of Cincinnati; 2006.

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. Wagner J. Cespedes’s Bat Gives Mets a Much-Needed Lift. New York Times. 2016;:B14.

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 Public Health
Abbreviation	BMC Public Health
ISSN (online)	1471-2458
Scope	Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health