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

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for BMC Clinical Pharmacology. 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. Schiermeier Q. Home truths. Nature. 2003;423:900–1.

A journal article with 2 authors

1. Starr MB, Wang X. Fundamental analysis of piezocatalysis process on the surfaces of strained piezoelectric materials. Sci Rep. 2013;3:2160.

A journal article with 3 authors

1. Zhou Q, Su X, Ning K. Assessment of quality control approaches for metagenomic data analysis. Sci Rep. 2014;4:6957.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

1. Rugar D, Budakian R, Mamin HJ, Chui BW. Single spin detection by magnetic resonance force microscopy. Nature. 2004;430:329–32.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

1. Kolb RW. Sovereign Debt. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.; 2011.

An edited book

1. Dietz HP. Atlas of Pelvic Floor Ultrasound. London: Springer; 2008.

A chapter in an edited book

1. Anzalone SM, Chetouani M. Tracking Posture and Head Movements of Impaired People During Interactions with Robots. In: Petrosino A, Maddalena L, Pala P, editors. New Trends in Image Analysis and Processing – ICIAP 2013: ICIAP 2013 International Workshops, Naples, Italy, September 9-13, 2013. Proceedings. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer; 2013. p. 41–9.

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 Pharmacology.

Blog post

1. Hale T. This “Orange Alligator” Has Been Spotted In South Carolina. IFLScience. 2017. https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/this-orange-alligator-has-been-spotted-in-north-carolina/. 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. NASA 5-Year Planning. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 1992.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

1. Burg CA. Faculty perspectives on doctoral student mentoring: The mentor’s odyssey. Doctoral dissertation. University of South Florida; 2010.

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. Shear MD. In Trump’s Silence, Pence Takes a Swipe at Russia. New York Times. 2017;:A8.

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 Pharmacology
ISSN (print)	1472-6904
Scope