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

Driehuys B. Chemistry. Toward molecular imaging with xenon MRI. Science. 2006 Oct 20;314(5798):432–3.

A journal article with 2 authors

Lutz RA, Falkowski PG. Ocean science. A dive to Challenger Deep. Science. 2012 Apr 20;336(6079):301–2.

A journal article with 3 authors

Scholz H, Franz M, Heberlein U. The hangover gene defines a stress pathway required for ethanol tolerance development. Nature. 2005 Aug 11;436(7052):845–7.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Rasmussen B, Fletcher IR, Brocks JJ, Kilburn MR. Reassessing the first appearance of eukaryotes and cyanobacteria. Nature. 2008 Oct 23;455(7216):1101–4.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Volpe MA. Rethinking Christian Identity. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing Ltd; 2013.

An edited book

Khubchandani I, Paonessa N, Azimuddin K, editors. Surgical Treatment of Hemorrhoids. 2nd ed. London: Springer; 2009. XVI, 188 p. 73 illus., 17 illus. in color.

A chapter in an edited book

Yaqub M, Cuingnet R, Napolitano R, Roundhill D, Papageorghiou A, Ardon R, et al. Volumetric Segmentation of Key Fetal Brain Structures in 3D Ultrasound. In: Wu G, Zhang D, Shen D, Yan P, Suzuki K, Wang F, editors. Machine Learning in Medical Imaging: 4th International Workshop, MLMI 2013, Held in Conjunction with MICCAI 2013, Nagoya, Japan, September 22, 2013 Proceedings. Cham: Springer International Publishing; 2013. p. 25–32. (Hutchison D, Kanade T, Kittler J, Kleinberg JM, Mattern F, Mitchell JC, et al., editors. Lecture Notes in Computer Science).

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

Fang J. IFLScience. IFLScience; 2014. Fin cams reveal the secret lives of sharks.

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. Transportation Security: Additional Actions Could Strengthen the Security of Intermodal Transportation Facilities. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 2010 May. Report No.: GAO-10-435R.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Sanchez M. For imagination and love – The permanence of the Mexican father who fathers at a distance [Doctoral dissertation]. [Chapel Hill, NC]: University of North Carolina; 2012.

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

Koblin J. New Life Emerges From the ‘Big Bang.’ New York Times. 2017 Aug 31;AR114.

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