How to format your references using the Bulletin of the World Health Organization citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Bulletin of the World Health Organization. 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

Tobalske BW. Evolution. Symmetry in turns. Science. 2009 Apr 10;324(5924):190–1.

A journal article with 2 authors

Kropman MF, Bakker HJ. Dynamics of water molecules in aqueous solvation shells. Science. 2001 Mar 16;291(5511):2118–20.

A journal article with 3 authors

Wise C, Pawlyn M, Braungart M. Eco-engineering: Living in a materials world. Nature. 2013 Feb 14;494(7436):172–5.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Wertman CA, Yablonsky RM, Shen Y, Merrill J, Kincaid CR, Pockalny RA. Mesoscale convective system surface pressure anomalies responsible for meteotsunamis along the U.S. East Coast on June 13th, 2013. Sci Rep. 2014 Nov 25;4:7143.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Kuehni RG. Color. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.; 2012.

An edited book

Zighed DA, Tsumoto S, Ras ZW, Hacid H, editors. Mining Complex Data. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer; 2009. XII, 302 p. 114 illus. (Studies in Computational Intelligence; vol. 165).

A chapter in an edited book

Hospenthal MAC, Gutierrez CJ. Diagnostic Radiology. In: Hospenthal DR, Rinaldi MG, editors. Diagnosis and Treatment of Human Mycoses. Totowa, NJ: Humana Press; 2008. p. 81–102. (Infectious Disease).

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 Bulletin of the World Health Organization.

Blog post

Andrews R. IFLScience. IFLScience; 2016 [cited 2018 Oct 30]. Explore Chernobyl In 360° Vision 30 Years On From The Nuclear Disaster. Available from: https://www.iflscience.com/environment/explore-chernobyl-360-vision-30-years-nuclear-disaster/

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. Export Controls: Sale of Telecommunications Equipment to China. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 1996 Nov. Report No.: NSIAD-97-5.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Boakyewa OA. Nana Oparebea and the Akonnedi Shrine: Cultural, religious and global agents [Doctoral dissertation]. [Bloomington, IN]: Indiana University; 2014.

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. DeGrom Displays His Old Form, but the Mets’ Offense Sputters. New York Times. 2017 Apr 6;B11.

In-text citations

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

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	Bulletin of the World Health Organization
Abbreviation	Bull. World Health Organ.
ISSN (print)	0042-9686
ISSN (online)	1564-0604
Scope	Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health