How to format your references using the BMC Medical Genetics citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for BMC Medical Genetics. 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. Collins H. We cannot live by scepticism alone. Nature. 2009;458:30.

A journal article with 2 authors

1. Belgrano A, Fowler CW. Evolution. How fisheries affect evolution. Science. 2013;342:1176–7.

A journal article with 3 authors

1. Gilbert IR, Jarvis PG, Smith H. Proximity signal and shade avoidance differences between early and late successional trees. Nature. 2001;411:792–5.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

1. Zhu Y, Doray B, Poussu A, Lehto VP, Kornfeld S. Binding of GGA2 to the lysosomal enzyme sorting motif of the mannose 6-phosphate receptor. Science. 2001;292:1716–8.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

1. Qiuwei Wu. Grid Integration of Electric Vehicles in Open Electricity Markets. Oxford, UK: John Wiley & Sons Ltd; 2013.

An edited book

1. Fan Y. Thermal Transport in Oblique Finned Micro/Minichannels. Cham: Springer International Publishing; 2015.

A chapter in an edited book

1. Samavi R, Consens MP, Topaloglou T. A Privacy Framework for the Personal Web. In: Chignell M, Cordy JR, Kealey R, Ng J, Yesha Y, editors. The Personal Web: A Research Agenda. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer; 2013. p. 87–112.

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 Medical Genetics.

Blog post

1. Andrew E. Are We Prepared For The Next Big Mediterranean Tsunami? IFLScience. 2015. https://www.iflscience.com/environment/are-we-prepared-next-big-mediterranean-tsunami/. 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. Policies on U.S. Citizens Studying Medicine Abroad Need Review and Reappraisal. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 1980.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

1. Wylie RW. Response to Intervention: A Study of Intervention Programs in Rural Secondary Schools. Doctoral dissertation. Lindenwood University; 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. Markoff J. Shhh! That Helpful Robot May Pose a Security Risk. New York Times. 2017;:B6.

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 Medical Genetics
Abbreviation	BMC Med. Genet.
ISSN (online)	1471-2350
Scope	Genetics Genetics(clinical)