How to format your references using the BMC Family Practice citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for BMC Family Practice. 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. Blinkhorn S. Yes, but what’s it for? Nature. 2001;412:771.

A journal article with 2 authors

1. Moore G, Wilson EO. Center for Applied Biodiversity Science. Integrating science and conservation. Nature. 2000;405:254.

A journal article with 3 authors

1. Johnson KG, Jackson JBC, Budd AF. Caribbean reef development was independent of coral diversity over 28 million years. Science. 2008;319:1521–3.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

1. Ekstrom LB, Roelfsema PR, Arsenault JT, Bonmassar G, Vanduffel W. Bottom-up dependent gating of frontal signals in early visual cortex. Science. 2008;321:414–7.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

1. Rangarao KV, Mallik RK. Digital Signal Processing. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd; 2006.

An edited book

1. Ometto JP, Bun R, Jonas M, Nahorski Z, editors. Uncertainties in Greenhouse Gas Inventories: Expanding Our Perspective. Cham: Springer International Publishing; 2015.

A chapter in an edited book

1. Onorato EM, Casilli F, Anzola GP. Echocardiographic Detection and Transcranial Doppler Quantification of Right-to-Left Shunting. In: Amin Z, Tobis JM, Sievert H, Carroll JD, editors. Patent Foramen Ovale. London: Springer; 2015. p. 33–47.

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 Family Practice.

Blog post

1. Hale T. France Becomes First Country To Ban Plastic Cups, Plates, And Cutlery. IFLScience. 2016. https://www.iflscience.com/environment/france-becomes-first-country-to-ban-plastic-cups-plates-and-cutlery/. 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. Education and Employment Issue Area: Active Assignments. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 1997.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

1. Kashyap SK. Bit Error Rate Performance of 4x2 Space-Time MIMO-OFDM Conjugate Cancellation Techniques. Doctoral dissertation. California State University, Long Beach; 2017.

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. Yablonsky L. Upping the Ante. New York Times. 2011;:M298.

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 Family Practice
Abbreviation	BMC Fam. Pract.
ISSN (online)	1471-2296
Scope	Family Practice