How to format your references using the BMC Zoology citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for BMC Zoology. 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	Find the style here: output styles overview
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. Yamanaka S. Elite and stochastic models for induced pluripotent stem cell generation. Nature. 2009;460:49–52.

A journal article with 2 authors

1. Halloran ME, Longini IM Jr. Public health. Community studies for vaccinating schoolchildren against influenza. Science. 2006;311:615–6.

A journal article with 3 authors

1. Standen EM, Du TY, Larsson HCE. Developmental plasticity and the origin of tetrapods. Nature. 2014;513:54–8.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

1. Zhang F, Wang Z, Dong W, Sun C, Wang H, Song A, et al. Transcriptomic and proteomic analysis reveals mechanisms of embryo abortion during chrysanthemum cross breeding. Sci Rep. 2014;4:6536.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

1. Arifin SMN, Madey GR, Collins FH. Spatial Agent-Based Simulation Modeling in Public Health. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc; 2016.

An edited book

1. Shehory O, Sturm A, editors. Agent-Oriented Software Engineering: Reflections on Architectures, Methodologies, Languages, and Frameworks. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer; 2014.

A chapter in an edited book

1. Bucksbaum PH. Ultrafast Quantum Control in Atoms and Molecules. In: Thomson R, Leburn C, Reid D, editors. Ultrafast Nonlinear Optics. Heidelberg: Springer International Publishing; 2013. p. 105–28.

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 Zoology.

Blog post

1. Davis J. Research Ship To Be Purposely Frozen In Arctic Ice To Drift Across The North Pole. IFLScience. 2017. 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. Technology Assessment: Water in the Energy Sector: Reducing Freshwater Use in Hydraulic Fracturing and Thermoelectric Power Plant Cooling. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 2015.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

1. Escamilla D. How performance following the implementation of a new structure affects employee engagement. Doctoral dissertation. Pepperdine University; 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. LaFRANIERE S, Porat D, Armendariz A. Unending but Unheard, the Echo of Gun Violence. New York Times. 2016;:A1.

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 Zoology
Abbreviation	BMC Zool.
ISSN (online)	2056-3132
Scope