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. Nattel S. New ideas about atrial fibrillation 50 years on. Nature. 2002;415:219–26.

A journal article with 2 authors

1. Frey BJ, Dueck D. Clustering by passing messages between data points. Science. 2007;315:972–6.

A journal article with 3 authors

1. Qiu XH, Nazin GV, Ho W. Vibrationally resolved fluorescence excited with submolecular precision. Science. 2003;299:542–6.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

1. Zhang L, Er JC, Ghosh KK, Chung WJ, Yoo J, Xu W, et al. Discovery of a structural-element specific G-quadruplex “light-up” probe. Sci Rep. 2014;4:3776.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

1. Ginena K, Hamid A. Foundations of Sharī‘ah Governance of Islamic Banks. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd; 2015.

An edited book

1. Yong C. The Wenchuan Earthquake of 2008: Anatomy of a Disaster. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer; 2011.

A chapter in an edited book

1. Yang M, Song T, Yu S, Shen L. Local Variation Joint Representation for Face Recognition with Single Sample per Person. In: Zha H, Chen X, Wang L, Miao Q, editors. Computer Vision: CCF Chinese Conference, CCCV 2015, Xi’an, China, September 18-20, 2015, Proceedings, Part II. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer; 2015. p. 41–50.

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. Russia has Released an Official Guide on how to Stay Safe... When Taking a Selfie. IFLScience. 2015. https://www.iflscience.com/technology/russia-has-released-official-how-stay-safewhen-taking-selfie/. 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. Telecommunications: Wire-Based Competition Benefited Consumers In Selected Markets. 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. Prejean KD. An Analysis of Corporal Punishment Practices in Texas Public Schools: Race, School District Size, Academic Performance, and Policy Influences. Doctoral dissertation. University of Louisiana; 2015.

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. Dominus S. Halls of Justice. New York Times. 2016;:MM58.

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