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. Macilwain C. Green Bank dish may be last of the giants. Nature. 2000;406:816.

A journal article with 2 authors

1. Smith ZR, Long JA. Control of Arabidopsis apical-basal embryo polarity by antagonistic transcription factors. Nature. 2010;464:423–6.

A journal article with 3 authors

1. Al-Zaid FS, Alhader AA, Al-Ayadhi LY. Altered ghrelin levels in boys with autism: a novel finding associated with hormonal dysregulation. Sci Rep. 2014;4:6478.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

1. Unnithan VV, Unc A, Joe V, Smith GB. Short RNA indicator sequences are not completely degraded by autoclaving. Sci Rep. 2014;4:4070.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

1. Albalate A, Minker W. Semi-Supervised and Unsupervised Machine Learning. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.; 2013.

An edited book

1. Deng H, Miao D, Wang FL, Lei J, editors. Emerging Research in Artificial Intelligence and Computational Intelligence: International Conference, AICI 2011, Taiyuan, China, September 23-25, 2011. Proceedings. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer; 2011.

A chapter in an edited book

1. Kiszczak A. The Learning Potential of Study Questions in TEFL Textbooks. In: Chodkiewicz H, Steinbrich P, Krzemińska-Adamek M, editors. Working with Text and Around Text in Foreign Language Environments. Cham: Springer International Publishing; 2016. p. 57–73.

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. Taub B. Oxytocin May Make You Better At Keeping A Beat. IFLScience. 2016. https://www.iflscience.com/brain/oxytocin-may-make-better-keeping-beat/. 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. Electronic Government: Potential Exists for Enhancing Collaboration on Four Initiatives. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 2003.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

1. Sutton DL. Preparing instrumental teachers: A resource for volunteer, lay music teachers in Salvation Army churches. Doctoral dissertation. California State University, Long Beach; 2010.

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. Wogan J. In Store; No Red, No Blue. New York Times. 2017;:ST3.

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