How to format your references using the British Medical Bulletin citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for British Medical Bulletin. 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

Eisenberg R. Chemistry. Rethinking water splitting. Science. 2009 Apr 3;324(5923):44–5.

A journal article with 2 authors

Friedman JS, Walter MA. Biomedicine. Under pressure. Science. 2002 Feb 8;295(5557):983–4.

A journal article with 3 authors

Sakakura A, Ukai A, Ishihara K. Enantioselective halocyclization of polyprenoids induced by nucleophilic phosphoramidites. Nature. 2007 Feb 22;445(7130):900–3.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Slavin JA, Anderson BJ, Baker DN, Benna M, Boardsen SA, Gloeckler G, et al. MESSENGER observations of extreme loading and unloading of Mercury’s magnetic tail. Science. 2010 Aug 6;329(5992):665–8.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Magnasco V. Models for Bonding in Chemistry. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd; 2010.

An edited book

Park JJ (jong H, Chao HC, Arabnia H, Yen NY, editors. Advanced Multimedia and Ubiquitous Engineering: Future Information Technology Volume 2. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer; 2016. XXVI, 513 p. 233 illus. (Lecture Notes in Electrical Engineering; vol. 354).

A chapter in an edited book

Tsimbalyuk V, Zinkovskii A, Gnesin V, Rzadkowski R, Sokolowski J. EXPERIMENTAL AND NUMERICAL INVESTIGATION OF 2D PALISADE FLUTTER FOR THE HARMONIC OSCILLATIONS. In: Hall KC, Kielb RE, Thomas JP, editors. UNSTEADY AERODYNAMICS, AEROACOUSTICS AND AEROELASTICITY OF TURBOMACHINES. Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands; 2006. p. 53–63.

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 Medical Bulletin.

Blog post

Andrew E. Why Are We Afraid Of Spiders? [Internet]. IFLScience. IFLScience; 2014 [cited 2018 Oct 30]. Available from: https://www.iflscience.com/brain/why-are-we-afraid-spiders/

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. Social Security Administration: Information Systems Could Improve Processing Attorney Fee Payments in Disability Program. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 2001 Jun. Report No.: GAO-01-796.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Alimo CJ. From dialogue to action: The development of White racial allies [Doctoral dissertation]. [College Park, MD]: University of Maryland, College Park; 2010.

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

Yablonsky L. The Hebrew School. New York Times. 2008 Nov 16;M280.

In-text citations

References should be cited in the text by sequential numbers in superscript:

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 Medical Bulletin
Abbreviation	Br. Med. Bull.
ISSN (print)	0007-1420
ISSN (online)	1471-8391
Scope	General Medicine