How to format your references using the British Journal of Cancer citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for British Journal of Cancer (BJC). 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	Download the output style file
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

Weaver HA (2004) Not a rubble pile? Science 304: 1760–1762.

A journal article with 2 authors

Nicholls RJ, Cazenave A (2010) Sea-level rise and its impact on coastal zones. Science 328: 1517–1520.

A journal article with 3 authors

Donlea JM, Ramanan N, Shaw PJ (2009) Use-dependent plasticity in clock neurons regulates sleep need in Drosophila. Science 324: 105–108.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Ling L, Jiafeng J, Jiangang L, Minchong S, Xin H, Hanliang S, Yuanhua D (2014) Effects of cold plasma treatment on seed germination and seedling growth of soybean. Sci Rep 4: 5859.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Lenk R, Lenk C (2011) Practical Lighting Design With LEDs (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.).

An edited book

Stolzenburg J-U, Türk IA, Liatsikos EN (2011) Laparoscopic and Robot-Assisted Surgery in Urology: Atlas of Standard Procedures (Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer).

A chapter in an edited book

Serra J (2011) Grain Building Ordering. In Mathematical Morphology and Its Applications to Image and Signal Processing: 10th International Symposium, ISMM 2011, Verbania-Intra, Italy, July 6-8, 2011. Proceedings, P. Soille, M. Pesaresi, and G.K. Ouzounis, eds. (Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer), pp. 37–48.

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 British Journal of Cancer.

Blog post

Andrew D (2017) Why Is It Still So Hard For Patients In Need To Get Medicinal Cannabis? (IFLScience) (accessed: 30/10/2018).

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 (1980) A Structure for Managing ADP Resources (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office).

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Mardakhanian A (2015) Blended CME, Inc. A business plan. Doctoral dissertation. California State University, Long Beach.

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

Walsh MW (2016) Hedge Funds Sue Governor of Puerto Rico Over Spending. New York Times B6.

In-text citations

References should be cited in the text by name and year in parentheses:

This sentence cites one reference (Weaver, 2004).
This sentence cites two references (Weaver, 2004; Nicholls & Cazenave, 2010).

Here are examples of in-text citations with multiple authors:

Two authors: (Nicholls & Cazenave, 2010)
Three or more authors: (Ling et al, 2014)

About the journal

Full journal title	British Journal of Cancer
Abbreviation	Br. J. Cancer
ISSN (print)	0007-0920
ISSN (online)	1532-1827
Scope	Cancer Research Oncology