How to format your references using the The British Journal of Psychiatry citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for The British Journal of Psychiatry (BJP). 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

Sun L. Inorganic chemistry. A closer mimic of the oxygen evolution complex of photosystem II. Science 2015; 348: 635–6.

A journal article with 2 authors

Pearson BJ, Doe CQ. Regulation of neuroblast competence in Drosophila. Nature 2003; 425: 624–8.

A journal article with 3 authors

Vannucchi P, Remitti F, Bettelli G. Geological record of fluid flow and seismogenesis along an erosive subducting plate boundary. Nature 2008; 451: 699–703.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Vik U, Logares R, Blaalid R, Halvorsen R, Carlsen T, Bakke I, et al. Different bacterial communities in ectomycorrhizae and surrounding soil. Sci Rep 2013; 3: 3471.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

American Institute of Timber Constr. Timber Construction Manual. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2012.

An edited book

Holick MF, editor. Vitamin D: Physiology, Molecular Biology, and Clinical Applications. Humana Press, 2010.

A chapter in an edited book

Guerraoui R, Raynal M. From Unreliable Objects to Reliable Objects: The Case of Atomic Registers and Consensus. In Parallel Computing Technologies: 9th International Conference, PaCT 2007, Pereslavl-Zalessky, Russia, September 3-7, 2007. Proceedings (ed V Malyshkin ): 47–61. Springer, 2007.

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 The British Journal of Psychiatry.

Blog post

Andrew E. Safety Of Contaminated Vitamins And Nutritional Supplements Can’t Be Left To Consumers. IFLScience. 2015. (https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/safety-contaminated-vitamins-and-nutritional-supplements-can-t-be-left-consumers/).

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. FAA Computer Systems: Limited Progress on Year 2000 Issue Increases Risk Dramatically. U.S. Government Printing Office, 1998.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Neilson DH. Structured interactions and collective outcomes essays on production and finance. 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

Shpigel B. Paralympics; Iranian Cyclist Dies After Crash at Rio Games. New York Times. 2016; : SP2.

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	The British Journal of Psychiatry
Abbreviation	Br. J. Psychiatry
ISSN (print)	0007-1250
ISSN (online)	1472-1465
Scope	Psychiatry and Mental health