How to format your references using the BMJ Open Respiratory Research citation style

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

Weinberger AJ. Planetary disks. A dusty business. Science. 2002;295:2027–8.

A journal article with 2 authors

O’Keefe FR, Chiappe LM. Viviparity and K-selected life history in a Mesozoic marine plesiosaur (Reptilia, Sauropterygia). Science. 2011;333:870–3.

A journal article with 3 authors

Causier B, Kieffer M, Davies B. Plant biology. MADS-box genes reach maturity. Science. 2002;296:275–6.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Zhukovsky EA, Lee J-O, Villegas M, et al. TNF ligands: is TALL-1 a trimer or a virus-like cluster? Nature. 2004;427:413–4; discussion 414.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Reeder L. Guide to Green Building Rating Systems. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 2010.

An edited book

Khurshid S, Sen K, editors. Runtime Verification: Second International Conference, RV 2011, San Francisco, CA, USA, September 27-30, 2011, Revised Selected Papers. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer 2012.

A chapter in an edited book

Chong Z, Yang L. An Algorithm for Automatic Recognition of Manhole Covers Based on MMS Images. In: Tan T, Wang G, Wang S, et al., eds. Advances in Image and Graphics Technologies: 11th Chinese Conference, IGTA 2016, Beijing, China, July 8-9, 2016, Proceedings. Singapore: Springer 2016:27–34.

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 Open Respiratory Research.

Blog post

Carpineti A. NASA To Create The Coldest Place In Space. IFLScience. 2017. https://www.iflscience.com/space/nasa-to-create-the-coldest-place-in-space/ (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. K-12 Education: Federal Funding for and Characteristics of Public Schools with Extended Learning Time. 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

Orbinati AG. Spirituality and learning: An exploration into the understanding of spirituality in adult education. 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

Koblin J, Grynbaum MM. How NBC Was Scooped on Its Own ‘Access Hollywood’ Trump Video. New York Times. 2016;B3.

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 Open Respiratory Research
Abbreviation	BMJ Open Respir. Res.
ISSN (online)	2052-4439
Scope