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

Thomas DJ. Evidence for deep-water production in the North Pacific Ocean during the early Cenozoic warm interval. Nature 2004;430:65–8.

A journal article with 2 authors

Scott GR, Gibert L. The oldest hand-axes in Europe. Nature 2009;461:82–5.

A journal article with 3 authors

Osawa M, Anderson DE, Erickson HP. Reconstitution of contractile FtsZ rings in liposomes. Science 2008;320:792–4.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Li B, Sheng M, Li J, et al. Tear proteomic analysis of Sjögren syndrome patients with dry eye syndrome by two-dimensional-nano-liquid chromatography coupled with tandem mass spectrometry. Sci Rep 2014;4:5772.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Hunt-Ahmed K. Contemporary Islamic Finance. Hoboken, NJ: : John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 2013.

An edited book

Cheli F. Advanced Dynamics of Mechanical Systems. Cham: : Springer International Publishing 2015.

A chapter in an edited book

Stanley ER. Regulation of Hematopoiesis by Growth Factors. In: Bilko NM, Fehse B, Ostertag W, et al., eds. Stem Cells and their Potential for Clinical Application. Dordrecht: : Springer Netherlands 2008. 63–75.

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

Andrew E. Milky Way’s Black Hole Is Unusually ‘Chatty’. IFLScience. 2015.https://www.iflscience.com/space/milky-ways-black-hole-unusually-chatty-author-amy-lynn/ (accessed 30 Oct 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. ADP Modernization: Health Care Financing Administration’s Software Redesign Contract. Washington, DC: : U.S. Government Printing Office 1989.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

DeVito MA. Facebook Family Values: A News Feed Hierarchy Of Needs. 2015.

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

Hodara S. Art and Its Inspiration, Side by Side. New York Times. 2015;:CT8.

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

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