How to format your references using the BMC Veterinary Research citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for BMC Veterinary Research. 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. Snyder SH. Neuroscience. Adam finds an exciting mate. Science. 2006;313:1744–5.

A journal article with 2 authors

1. DeMeo FE, Carry B. Solar System evolution from compositional mapping of the asteroid belt. Nature. 2014;505:629–34.

A journal article with 3 authors

1. Efeyan A, Comb WC, Sabatini DM. Nutrient-sensing mechanisms and pathways. Nature. 2015;517:302–10.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

1. Perry CT, Alvarez-Filip L, Graham NAJ, Mumby PJ, Wilson SK, Kench PS, et al. Loss of coral reef growth capacity to track future increases in sea level. Nature. 2018;558:396–400.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

1. Sewell G. The Numerical Solution of Ordinary and Partial Differential Equations. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.; 2005.

An edited book

1. Zhuang Y, Yang S-Q, Rui Y, He Q, editors. Advances in Multimedia Information Processing - PCM 2006: 7th Pacific Rim Conference on Multimedia, Hangzhou, China, November 2-4, 2006. Proceedings. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer; 2006.

A chapter in an edited book

1. Lo C-F. The Soft Codification of the UNIDROIT Principles of International Commercial. In: Wang W-Y, editor. Codification in International Perspective: Selected Papers from the 2nd IACL Thematic Conference. Cham: Springer International Publishing; 2014. p. 61–73.

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 Veterinary Research.

Blog post

1. Andrew E. How Neurosurgeons Can Now Look At Your Brain Through Your Eyes. IFLScience. 2015. https://www.iflscience.com/brain/how-neurosurgeons-can-now-look-your-brain-through-your-eyes/. 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. Bilingual Education: Information on Limited English Proficient Students. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 1987.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

1. Reese SR. Transitioning to the oboe: Methods and resources to assist in switching to the oboe from other woodwind instruments. Doctoral dissertation. California State University, Long Beach; 2012.

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. Williams J. Murder, He Wrote. New York Times. 2017;:BR6.

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 Veterinary Research
Abbreviation	BMC Vet. Res.
ISSN (online)	1746-6148
Scope	General Medicine General Veterinary