How to format your references using the BMC Structural Biology citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for BMC Structural Biology. 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. Fleischhauer M. Physics. Switching light by vacuum. Science. 2011;333:1228–9.

A journal article with 2 authors

1. Brunnschweiler CN, Bulte EH. Economics. Linking natural resources to slow growth and more conflict. Science. 2008;320:616–7.

A journal article with 3 authors

1. Hosoya T, Baccus SA, Meister M. Dynamic predictive coding by the retina. Nature. 2005;436:71–7.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

1. Johnson D, Krsek M, Wellington EMH, Stott AW, Cole L, Bardgett RD, et al. Soil invertebrates disrupt carbon flow through fungal networks. Science. 2005;309:1047.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

1. Curry SH, Whelpton R. Drug Disposition and Pharmacokinetics. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd; 2010.

An edited book

1. Ossowski S, editor. Agreement Technologies. Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands; 2013.

A chapter in an edited book

1. Kim J, Tsudik G. Survival in the Wild: Robust Group Key Agreement in Wide-Area Networks. In: Lee PJ, Cheon JH, editors. Information Security and Cryptology – ICISC 2008: 11th International Conference, Seoul, Korea, December 3-5, 2008, Revised Selected Papers. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer; 2009. p. 66–83.

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 Structural Biology.

Blog post

1. Andrew E. Unexpected Giant Exoplanet Discovered. IFLScience. 2014. https://www.iflscience.com/space/unexpected-giant-exoplanet-discovered/. 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. Transportation: Key Issues and Management Challenges. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 2012.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

1. Villegas B. The optimization and characterization of superconducting magnesium diboride thin films. Doctoral dissertation. California State University, Long Beach; 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. de la MERCED MJ. A Mattress Maker Strikes a Deal With Target. New York Times. 2017;:B2.

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 Structural Biology
Abbreviation	BMC Struct. Biol.
ISSN (online)	1472-6807
Scope	Structural Biology