How to format your references using the BMC Surgery citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for BMC Surgery. 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. Corbyn Z. Science education: Research on the reservation. Nature. 2011;471:25–6.

A journal article with 2 authors

1. Trampert J, van Heijst HJ. Global azimuthal anisotropy in the transition zone. Science. 2002;296:1297–9.

A journal article with 3 authors

1. Anderson DG, Burdick JA, Langer R. Materials science. Smart biomaterials. Science. 2004;305:1923–4.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

1. Ohki K, Chung S, Kara P, Hübener M, Bonhoeffer T, Reid RC. Highly ordered arrangement of single neurons in orientation pinwheels. Nature. 2006;442:925–8.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

1. Gladon RJ, Graves WR, Kelly JM. Getting Published in the Life Sciences. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.; 2011.

An edited book

1. Virvou M, Jain LC, editors. Intelligent Interactive Systems in Knowledge-Based Environments. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer; 2008.

A chapter in an edited book

1. Vukotic A, Goodwill J. Persistent Sessions. In: Goodwill J, editor. Apache Tomcat 7. Berkeley, CA: Apress; 2011. p. 95–118.

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 Surgery.

Blog post

1. Davis J. The Only Way To Prevent The Great Barrier Reef From Dying Is To Stop Climate Change. IFLScience. 2017. https://www.iflscience.com/environment/the-only-way-to-prevent-the-great-barrier-reef-from-dying-is-to-stop-climate-change/. 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. Information Technology: Early Releases of Customs Trade System Operating, but Pattern of Cost and Schedule Problems Needs to Be Addressed. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 2004.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

1. Duggimpudi MB. Object Ranking Algorithms for Improved Decision Making. Doctoral dissertation. University of Louisiana; 2017.

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. Sisario B. Amazon Pairs Echo With Music Streaming Service. New York Times. 2016;:B1.

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 Surgery
Abbreviation	BMC Surg.
ISSN (online)	1471-2482
Scope	General Medicine Surgery