How to format your references using the BMJ Quality Improvement Reports citation style

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

Launius RD. Neil Armstrong (1930-2012). Nature. 2012;489:368.

A journal article with 2 authors

Coombs R, Georghiou L. Research and development. A new ‘industrial ecology’. Science. 2002;296:471.

A journal article with 3 authors

Brown T, Sibbett W, Wright EM. Laser physics. Getting to grips with light. Science. 2001;293:1265–7.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Song J, Wu L, Chen Z, et al. Axons guided by insulin receptor in Drosophila visual system. Science. 2003;300:502–5.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Passarelli D. Trading Options Greeks. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 2012.

An edited book

Wasum-Rainer S, Winkelmann I, Tiroch K, editors. Arctic Science, International Law and Climate Change: Legal Aspects of Marine Science in the Arctic Ocean. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer 2012.

A chapter in an edited book

Gövem B, Järvinen K, Aerts K, et al. A Fast and Compact FPGA Implementation of Elliptic Curve Cryptography Using Lambda Coordinates. In: Pointcheval D, Nitaj A, Rachidi T, eds. Progress in Cryptology – AFRICACRYPT 2016: 8th International Conference on Cryptology in Africa, Fes, Morocco, April 13-15, 2016, Proceedings. Cham: Springer International Publishing 2016:63–83.

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 Quality Improvement Reports.

Blog post

Andrew D. Awesome Science Parody Of Taylor Swift Song. IFLScience. 2015. https://www.iflscience.com/editors-blog/science-does-taylor-swift/ (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. Commercial Space Launch Insurance: Views Differ on Need for Change to Insurance Approach but Clarification Is Needed. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office 2016.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Bubert EA. Highly extensible skin for a variable wing-span morphing aircraft utilizing pneumatic artificial muscle actuation. 2009.

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

Chira S. When a House Falls in the Forest. New York Times. 2013;D4.

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 Quality Improvement Reports
Abbreviation	BMJ Qual. Improv. Rep.
ISSN (online)	2050-1315
Scope