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

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for British Journal of Ophthalmology. 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

Szymańska MH. Physics. Intertwining electron tunneling with light. Science. 2012;336:679–80.

A journal article with 2 authors

Quinn TC, Overbaugh J. HIV/AIDS in women: an expanding epidemic. Science. 2005;308:1582–3.

A journal article with 3 authors

Collins FS, Gray GM, Bucher JR. Toxicology. Transforming environmental health protection. Science. 2008;319:906–7.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Zhong W, Feng H, Santiago FE, et al. CUL-4 ubiquitin ligase maintains genome stability by restraining DNA-replication licensing. Nature. 2003;423:885–9.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Franssen J-M, Vila Real P. Fire Design of Steel Structures. Weinheim, Germany: Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA 2016.

An edited book

Cagnoni S, Mirolli M, Villani M, editors. Evolution, Complexity and Artificial Life. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer 2014.

A chapter in an edited book

Seidl C, Pogorelskiy K, Traub S. Data and Fiscal Institutions of the Surveyed Countries. In: Pogorelskiy K, Traub S, eds. Tax Progression in OECD Countries: An Integrative Analysis of Tax Schedules and Income Distributions. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer 2013:71–151.

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 Ophthalmology.

Blog post

Davis J. New Parenting Therapy Could Help Improve Severely Autistic Children’s Communication. IFLScience. 2016. https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/new-parenting-therapy-could-help-improve-severely-autistic-childrens-communication/ (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. Managed Care Initiatives. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office 1996.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Vidal EM. Alcohol disorder with hip or knee surgery: Postoperative alcohol disorder-related costs and length of stay. 2014.

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. Early Emmy Leads For ‘S.N.L.’ and HBO. New York Times. 2017;C3.

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	British Journal of Ophthalmology
Abbreviation	Br. J. Ophthalmol.
ISSN (print)	0007-1161
ISSN (online)	1468-2079
Scope	Ophthalmology Cellular and Molecular Neuroscience Sensory Systems