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

Oard DW. Social science. Unlocking the potential of the spoken word. Science 2008; 321: 1787–8.

A journal article with 2 authors

Morris RG, Barthelemy M. Interdependent networks: the fragility of control. Sci Rep 2013; 3: 2764.

A journal article with 3 authors

Alexander RB, Smith RA, Schwarz GE. Effect of stream channel size on the delivery of nitrogen to the Gulf of Mexico. Nature 2000; 403: 758–61.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Cho J, Jeon S, Wilson SA, Liu LV, Kang EA, Braymer JJ, et al. Structure and reactivity of a mononuclear non-haem iron(III)-peroxo complex. Nature 2011; 478: 502–5.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Obayya S. Computational Photonics. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, 2010.

An edited book

Mohanty H, Bhuyan P, Chenthati D, editors. Big Data: A Primer. Springer India, 2015.

A chapter in an edited book

Damgård I, Lunemann C. Quantum-Secure Coin-Flipping and Applications. In Advances in Cryptology – ASIACRYPT 2009: 15th International Conference on the Theory and Application of Cryptology and Information Security, Tokyo, Japan, December 6-10, 2009. Proceedings (ed M Matsui ): 52–69. Springer, 2009.

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 D. There’s No Such Thing As An Alpha Male. IFLScience. 2016. (https://www.iflscience.com/editors-blog/theres-no-such-thing-as-an-alpha-male/).

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. [Comments on NASA Agreement With Firm for Commercial Launch Services]. U.S. Government Printing Office, 1986.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Liu CC. Charles T. Griffes’s “Roman Sketches”: A performer’s guide. 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

Brantley B. Don’t Cry, Baby Monkeys. New York Times. 2017; : C1.

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