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. Tyson JJ. Bringing cartoons to life. Nature. 2007;445:823.

A journal article with 2 authors

1. Hyman AA, Simons K. Cell biology. Beyond oil and water--phase transitions in cells. Science. 2012;337:1047–9.

A journal article with 3 authors

1. Schoener TW, Spiller DA, Losos JB. Natural restoration of the species-area relation for a lizard after a hurricane. Science. 2001;294:1525–8.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

1. Ludwig M-G, Vanek M, Guerini D, Gasser JA, Jones CE, Junker U, et al. Proton-sensing G-protein-coupled receptors. Nature. 2003;425:93–8.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

1. Vaccari DA, Strom PF, Alleman JE. Environmental Biology for Engineers and Scientists. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.; 2005.

An edited book

1. Leszczynski D, editor. Radiation Proteomics: The effects of ionizing and non-ionizing radiation on cells and tissues. Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands; 2013.

A chapter in an edited book

1. Deb K, Lele S, Datta R. A Hybrid Evolutionary Multi-objective and SQP Based Procedure for Constrained Optimization. In: Kang L, Liu Y, Zeng S, editors. Advances in Computation and Intelligence: Second International Symposium, ISICA 2007 Wuhan, China, September 21-23, 2007 Proceedings. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer; 2007. p. 36–45.

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. Andrew E. Malaria Vaccine Trial Yields Promising Results. IFLScience. 2014. https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/malaria-vaccine-trial-yields-promising-results/. 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. GPS Disruptions: Efforts to Assess Risks to Critical Infrastructure and Coordinate Agency Actions Should Be Enhanced. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 2013.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

1. Coppock JE. Optical and Magnetic Measurements of a Levitated, Gyroscopically Stabilized Graphene Nanoplatelet. Doctoral dissertation. University of Maryland, College Park; 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. Jeter J, Bromwich JE, Chokshi N. Wildfires Force Thousands to Flee in East Tennessee. New York Times. 2016;:A18.

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

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