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

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for British Journal of Pharmacology (BJP). 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:

PaperpileThe citation style is built in and you can choose it in Settings > Citation Style or Paperpile > Citation Style in Google Docs.
EndNoteDownload the output style file
Mendeley, Zotero, Papers, and othersThe style is either built in or you can download a CSL file that is supported by most references management programs.
BibTeXBibTeX 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
Smaglik, P. (2000). US industry starts to think big by acting small. Nature 408: 621–622.
A journal article with 2 authors
McCann, K.L., and Baserga, S.J. (2013). Genetics. Mysterious ribosomopathies. Science 341: 849–850.
A journal article with 3 authors
Schuler, B., Lipman, E.A., and Eaton, W.A. (2002). Probing the free-energy surface for protein folding with single-molecule fluorescence spectroscopy. Nature 419: 743–747.
A journal article with 7 or more authors
Remskar, M., Mrzel, A., Skraba, Z., Jesih, A., Ceh, M., Demsar, J., et al. (2001). Self-assembly of subnanometer-diameter single-wall MoS2 nanotubes. Science 292: 479–481.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book
Popkin, J.D. (2011). A Concise History of the Haitian Revolution (Oxford, UK: Wiley-Blackwell).
An edited book
(2015). NASA Formal Methods: 7th International Symposium, NFM 2015, Pasadena, CA, USA, April 27-29, 2015, Proceedings (Cham: Springer International Publishing).
A chapter in an edited book
Tomppo, E., Heikkinen, J., Henttonen, H.M., Ihalainen, A., Katila, M., Mäkelä, H., et al. (2011). Results. In Designing and Conducting a Forest Inventory - Case: 9th National Forest Inventory of Finland, J. Heikkinen, H.M. Henttonen, A. Ihalainen, M. Katila, H. Mäkelä, T. Tuomainen, et al., eds. (Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands), pp 93–177.

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 Pharmacology.

Blog post
Davis, J. (2016). Satellite Imagery Combined With AI Used To Identify People Living In Most Poverty (IFLScience).

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 (2012). Aviation Safety: FAA Is Taking Steps to Improve Data, but Challenges for Managing Safety Risks Remain (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
Amos, A.E. (2010). Perceptions of the persistent: Academic experiences of first generation community college students. Doctoral dissertation. Capella University.

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
(nyt), S.K. (2002). World Briefing | Europe: Russia: Top Chechen Reported Killed. New York Times A8.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Smaglik, 2000).
This sentence cites two references (Smaglik, 2000; McCann and Baserga, 2013).

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

  • Two authors: (McCann and Baserga, 2013)
  • Three or more authors: (Remskar et al., 2001)

About the journal

Full journal titleBritish Journal of Pharmacology
AbbreviationBr. J. Pharmacol.
ISSN (print)0007-1188
ISSN (online)1476-5381
ScopePharmacology

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