How to format your references using the BMC Clinical Pathology citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for BMC Clinical Pathology. 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 reference managers.
BibTeX	BibTeX styles 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

1. Savage N. Bioinformatics: Big data versus the big C. Nature. 2014;509:S66-7.

A journal article with 2 authors

1. Lutz W, Kc S. Global human capital: integrating education and population. Science. 2011;333:587–92.

A journal article with 3 authors

1. McCloskey J, Nalbant SS, Steacy S. Indonesian earthquake: earthquake risk from co-seismic stress. Nature. 2005;434:291.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

1. Lu S, Seong J, Wang Y, Chang S-C, Eichorst JP, Ouyang M, et al. Decipher the dynamic coordination between enzymatic activity and structural modulation at focal adhesions in living cells. Sci Rep. 2014;4:5756.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

1. Hartfuß H-J, Geist T. Fusion Plasma Diagnostics with mm-Waves. Weinheim, Germany: Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA; 2013.

An edited book

1. Kallio KP, Mills S, Skelton T, editors. Politics, Citizenship and Rights. 1st ed. 2016. Singapore: Springer; 2016.

A chapter in an edited book

1. Wagle M, Booss D, Schreter I, Egenolf D. NUMA-Aware Memory Management with In-Memory Databases. In: Nambiar R, Poess M, editors. Performance Evaluation and Benchmarking: Traditional to Big Data to Internet of Things: 7th TPC Technology Conference, TPCTC 2015, Kohala Coast, HI, USA, August 31 – September 4, 2015. Revised Selected Papers. Cham: Springer International Publishing; 2016. p. 45–60.

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 BMC Clinical Pathology.

Blog post

1. Fang J. Female Pigs Recognize The Sex of Sperm. IFLScience. 2014. https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/female-pigs-recognize-sex-sperm/. Accessed 30 Oct 2018.

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

1. Government Accountability Office. Motor Vehicle Safety: A Review of the NTSB Report on Rear Seat Lap Belt Effectiveness. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 1987.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

1. Arendt KR. Symbiosis establishment and ecological effects of endohyphal bacteria on foliar fungi. Doctoral dissertation. University of Arizona; 2015.

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

1. Wagner J. For a Weekend, ‘Lil D’ on a Jersey and Sinatra on Cleats. New York Times. 2017;:D1.

In-text citations

References should be cited in the text by sequential numbers in square brackets:

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	BMC Clinical Pathology
Abbreviation	BMC Clin. Pathol.
ISSN (online)	1472-6890
Scope	Histology Pathology and Forensic Medicine