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

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for British Journal of Sports Medicine. 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	Find the style here: output styles overview
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

Sinclair DA. Cell biology. An age of instability. Science 2003;301:1859–60.

A journal article with 2 authors

Buehler MJ, Gao H. Dynamical fracture instabilities due to local hyperelasticity at crack tips. Nature 2006;439:307–10.

A journal article with 3 authors

Kanai T, Minemoto S, Sakai H. Quantum interference during high-order harmonic generation from aligned molecules. Nature 2005;435:470–4.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Navarre WW, Porwollik S, Wang Y, et al. Selective silencing of foreign DNA with low GC content by the H-NS protein in Salmonella. Science 2006;313:236–8.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Lui SH. Numerical Analysis of Partial Differential Equations. Hoboken, NJ: : John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 2011.

An edited book

Tiwari P, editor. The Towers of New Capital: Mega Townships in India. London: : Palgrave Macmillan UK 2016.

A chapter in an edited book

Akinbami CAO, Olawoye JE, Adesina FA. Rural Women Belief System and Attitude Toward Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation Strategies in Nigeria. In: Leal Filho W, Musa H, Cavan G, et al., eds. Climate Change Adaptation, Resilience and Hazards. Cham: : Springer International Publishing 2016. 49–69.

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 Sports Medicine.

Blog post

Carpineti A. The Best Close-Up Picture Of Pluto From New Horizons Yet. IFLScience. 2016.

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. Observations on the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s Fiscal Year 2000 Performance Plan. Washington, DC: : U.S. Government Printing Office 1999.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

DeHart WP. The leader liminal sphere: A phenomenological inquiry. 2008.

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

Wagner J. By Providing Power Off the Bench, Conforto Preserves Place on Mets’ Roster. New York Times. 2017;:B10.

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 Sports Medicine
Abbreviation	Br. J. Sports Med.
ISSN (print)	0306-3674
ISSN (online)	1473-0480
Scope	General Medicine Orthopedics and Sports Medicine Physical Therapy, Sports Therapy and Rehabilitation

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