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

Sarewitz D (2014) Allow use of electronic cigarettes to assess risk. Nature 512: 349.

A journal article with 2 authors

Gaillardet J, Galy A (2008) Atmospheric science. Himalaya--carbon sink or source? Science 320: 1727–1728.

A journal article with 3 authors

Beekman M, Calis JN, Boot WJ (2000) Parasitic honeybees get royal treatment. Nature 404: 723.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Ebisawa K, Maeda Y, Kaneda H, Yamauchi S (2001) Origin of the hard x-ray emission from the Galactic plane. Science 293: 1633–1635.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Pascoe N (2011) Reliability Technology (Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd).

An edited book

Mark D (2011) Beginning iOS 5 Development: Exploring the iOS SDK (Berkeley, CA: Apress).

A chapter in an edited book

Tabu K, Bizen N, Taga T, Tanaka S (2013) Gene Regulation of Prominin-1 (CD133) in Normal and Cancerous Tissues. In Prominin-1 (CD133): New Insights on Stem & Cancer Stem Cell Biology, D. Corbeil, ed. (New York, NY: Springer), pp. 73–85.

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 E (2014) ‘Shock And Kill’ Approach Cures Mice Of HIV In World First (IFLScience) https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/shock-and-kill-approach-cures-mice-hiv-world-first/ (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 (1991) Grant Administration: Implementation of National Endowment for the Arts Reauthorization Act (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

Alonzo CE (2010) Operation Uniting Families: Family treatment program a grant. 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

Roach M (2016) Not an Accident. New York Times BR8.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Sarewitz, 2014).
This sentence cites two references (Gaillardet & Galy, 2008; Sarewitz, 2014).

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

Two authors: (Gaillardet & Galy, 2008)
Three or more authors: (Ebisawa et al, 2001)

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