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

Butler D. China rejects internet claims of human cases. Nature. 2005 Jun 2;435(7042):542–3.

A journal article with 2 authors

Relling MV, Evans WE. Pharmacogenomics in the clinic. Nature. 2015 Oct 15;526(7573):343–50.

A journal article with 3 authors

Kim D, Son SW, Jeong H. Large-scale quantitative analysis of painting arts. Sci Rep. 2014 Dec 11;4:7370.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Xu W, Bony BA, Kim CR, Baeck JS, Chang Y, Bae JE, et al. Mixed lanthanide oxide nanoparticles as dual imaging agent in biomedicine. Sci Rep. 2013 Nov 13;3:3210.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Zeng K, Lou W, Li M. Multihop Wireless Networks. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd; 2011.

An edited book

Sakakibara Y, Mi Y, editors. DNA Computing and Molecular Programming: 16th International Conference, DNA 16, Hong Kong, China, June 14-17, 2010, Revised Selected Papers. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer; 2011. X, 187 p. 86 illus., 62 illus. in color. (Lecture Notes in Computer Science; vol. 6518).

A chapter in an edited book

Shrestha B, Kindlmann P, Jnawali SR. Interactions Between the Himalayan Tahr, Livestock and Snow Leopards in the Sagarmatha National Park. In: Kindlmann P, editor. Himalayan Biodiversity in the Changing World. Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands; 2012. p. 115–43.

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. Archeologists Uncover Genghis Khan’s Lost Mongolian Fortress [Internet]. IFLScience. IFLScience; 2015 [cited 2018 Oct 30]. Available from: https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/archeologists-uncover-genghis-khan-s-lost-mongolian-fortress/

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. A Single Federal Authority Is Needed for Establishing or Constructing Rehabilitation Facilities. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 1979 Aug. Report No.: HRD-79-84.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Curti CL. Talking About Science Interests: The Importance of Feedback Appraisals When Students Talk About Their Interests in STEM [Doctoral dissertation]. [Long Beach, CA]: California State University, Long Beach; 2017.

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. Mets’ Familia Arrested in Domestic Violence Case; 2017 Status in Doubt. New York Times. 2016 Nov 1;B13.

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