How to format your references using the BMJ citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for BMJ. 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

Zhou M. Materials science. Exceptional properties by design. Science. 2013;339:1161–2.

A journal article with 2 authors

Der BS, Kuhlman B. Biochemistry. From computational design to a protein that binds. Science. 2011;332:801–2.

A journal article with 3 authors

Haile-Selassie Y, Suwa G, White TD. Late Miocene teeth from Middle Awash, Ethiopia, and early hominid dental evolution. Science. 2004;303:1503–5.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Ilani S, Martin J, Teitelbaum E, et al. The microscopic nature of localization in the quantum Hall effect. Nature. 2004;427:328–32.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Raghavan V. Combustion Technology. Chichester, UK: John Wiley &;#38; Sons, Ltd 2016.

An edited book

Hanus M, editor. Logic-Based Program Synthesis and Transformation: 18th International Symposium, LOPSTR 2008, Valencia, Spain, July 17-18, 2008, Revised Selected Papers. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer 2009.

A chapter in an edited book

Adamson G. ‘The Most Horrible of Evils’: Social Responses to Drought and Famine in the Bombay Presidency, 1782–1857. In: Bankoff G, Christensen J, eds. Natural Hazards and Peoples in the Indian Ocean World: Bordering on Danger. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan US 2016:79–104.

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 BMJ.

Blog post

Carpineti A. How Rain Helped Shaped The Surface Of Mars. IFLScience. 2017. https://www.iflscience.com/space/how-rain-helped-shaped-the-surface-of-mars/ (accessed 30 October 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

Government Accountability Office. Organizing the Federal Communications Commission for Greater Management and Regulatory Effectiveness. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office 1979.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Rajendran N. Assessment of upper extremity strength, power, and flexibility characteristics of college-aged male and female students. 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

Barron J. Nine Million Desserts, for Gabriel, Michael, Alessandra and More. New York Times. 2017;A21.

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	BMJ
Abbreviation	BMJ
ISSN (print)	0959-8138
ISSN (online)	1756-1833
Scope