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

Savage N. Technology: Dancing with robots. Nature. 2012;492:S16-7.

A journal article with 2 authors

Brandman O, Meyer T. Feedback loops shape cellular signals in space and time. Science. 2008;322:390–5.

A journal article with 3 authors

Anuar TS, Salleh FM, Moktar N. Soil-transmitted helminth infections and associated risk factors in three Orang Asli tribes in Peninsular Malaysia. Sci Rep. 2014;4:4101.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Murray CD, Chavez C, Beurle K, et al. How Prometheus creates structure in Saturn’s F ring. Nature. 2005;437:1326–9.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Rim CT, Mi C. Wireless Power Transfer for Electric Vehicles and Mobile Devices. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd 2017.

An edited book

Arase D, editor. China’s Rise and Changing Order in East Asia. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan US 2016.

A chapter in an edited book

Zanibbi R, Blostein D, Cordy JR. Decision-Based Specification and Comparison of Table Recognition Algorithms. In: Marinai S, Fujisawa H, eds. Machine Learning in Document Analysis and Recognition. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer 2008:71–103.

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

Fang J. Monster Galaxies Gobble Smaller Neighbors to Bulk Up. IFLScience. 2014. https://www.iflscience.com/space/monster-galaxies-gobble-smaller-neighbors-bulk/ (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. Information Technology: OMB Can More Effectively Use Its Investment Reviews. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office 2005.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Dinneny PN. End of August. 2017.

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. Why Women Aren’t C.E.O.s. New York Times. 2017;SR1.

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