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

Pain E. Science careers. Playing well with industry. Science. 2008 Mar 14;319(5869):1548–51.

A journal article with 2 authors

Asimow PD, Langmuir CH. The importance of water to oceanic mantle melting regimes. Nature. 2003 Feb 20;421(6925):815–20.

A journal article with 3 authors

Mendoza M, Herrmann HJ, Succi S. Hydrodynamic model for conductivity in graphene. Sci Rep. 2013 Jan 11;3:1052.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Bellini T, Radzihovsky L, Toner J, Clark NA. Universality and scaling in the disordering of a smectic liquid crystal. Science. 2001 Nov 2;294(5544):1074–9.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Lee Abbott M, McKinney J. Understanding and Applying Research Design. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.; 2012.

An edited book

Bertoni G, Coron JS, editors. Cryptographic Hardware and Embedded Systems - CHES 2013: 15th International Workshop, Santa Barbara, CA, USA, August 20-23, 2013. Proceedings. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer; 2013. XIV, 490 p. 172 illus. (Lecture Notes in Computer Science; vol. 8086).

A chapter in an edited book

Power C. BASIC EDUCATION FOR ALL. In: Campbell J, Baikaloff N, Power C, editors. Towards a Global Community: Educating for Tomorrow’s World. Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands; 2006. p. 71–80. (EDUCATION IN THE ASIA-PACIFIC REGION: ISSUES, CONCERNS AND PROSPECTS).

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

Davis J. Badly-Designed Animal Experiments Might Over Exaggerate Benefits Of New Drugs Trialed [Internet]. IFLScience. IFLScience; 2015 [cited 2018 Oct 30]. Available from: https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/badly-designed-animal-experiments-might-over-exaggerate-benefits-new-drugs/

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. Technology Transfer: Constraints Perceived by Federal Laboratory and Agency Officials. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 1988 Mar. Report No.: RCED-88-116BR.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Penix-Tadsen P. Marketing marginality: Resistance and commodification in contemporary Latin American cultural production [Doctoral dissertation]. [New York, NY]: Columbia University; 2009.

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

ROBERT KELLY; Robert Kelly is a poet who teaches literature, writing at Bard College. “I’D RATHER BE A GREAT BAD POET.” New York Times. 1990 Feb 11;77.

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

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