How to format your references using the BMC Neurology citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for BMC Neurology. 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. Dohlman HG. Diminishing returns. Nature. 2002;418:591.

A journal article with 2 authors

1. Ionescu AM, Riel H. Tunnel field-effect transistors as energy-efficient electronic switches. Nature. 2011;479:329–37.

A journal article with 3 authors

1. Kennedy S, Wang D, Ruvkun G. A conserved siRNA-degrading RNase negatively regulates RNA interference in C. elegans. Nature. 2004;427:645–9.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

1. Hwang D, Kim DY, Jo SM, Armel V, MacFarlane DR, Kim D, et al. Highly efficient plastic crystal ionic conductors for solid-state dye-sensitized solar cells. Sci Rep. 2013;3:3520.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

1. Taylor TA. Guide to LEED® 2009 Estimating and Preconstruction Strategies. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.; 2010.

An edited book

1. Hens T. Financial Economics: A Concise Introduction to Classical and Behavioral Finance. 2nd ed. 2016. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer; 2016.

A chapter in an edited book

1. Wagatsuma K, Harada T, Anze S, Goto Y, Cheng J. A Supporting Tool for Spiral Model of Cryptographic Protocol Design with Reasoning-Based Formal Analysis. In: Park JJ (jong H, Chao H-C, Arabnia H, Yen NY, editors. Advanced Multimedia and Ubiquitous Engineering: Future Information Technology Volume 2. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer; 2016. p. 25–32.

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 Neurology.

Blog post

1. Andrew E. New Cases Rise, But Death Rates Decline – How Cancer Became About Quality Of Life. IFLScience. 2015. 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 Property: Poor Lending Practices and Controls at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 1994.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

1. Berezin S. Catechols as membrane anion transporters. Doctoral dissertation. University of Maryland, College Park; 2009.

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. Schmitt E, Gordon MR, Sengupta S. U.S. Ties Russia to Strike on U.N. Convoy in Syria. New York Times. 2016;:A1.

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 Neurology
Abbreviation	BMC Neurol.
ISSN (online)	1471-2377
Scope	General Medicine Clinical Neurology