How to format your references using the BMC Pharmacology citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for BMC 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. Levermann A. Climate economics: make supply chains climate-smart. Nature. 2014;506:27–9.

A journal article with 2 authors

1. Roderick ML, Farquhar GD. The cause of decreased pan evaporation over the past 50 years. Science. 2002;298:1410–1.

A journal article with 3 authors

1. Bettencourt LMA, Samaniego H, Youn H. Professional diversity and the productivity of cities. Sci Rep. 2014;4:5393.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

1. Henson SM, Costantino RF, Cushing JM, Desharnais RA, Dennis B, King AA. Lattice effects observed in chaotic dynamics of experimental populations. Science. 2001;294:602–5.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

1. Krishnan V. Probability and Random Processes. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.; 2006.

An edited book

1. Oyama T, editor. Endoscopic Diagnosis of Superficial Gastric Cancer for ESD. Tokyo: Springer Japan; 2016.

A chapter in an edited book

1. Velupillai H, Mokhonoana P. Evaluation of Registry Data Removal by Shredder Programs. In: Ray I, Shenoi S, editors. Advances in Digital Forensics IV. Boston, MA: Springer US; 2008. p. 51–8.

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 Pharmacology.

Blog post

1. Taub B. How LSD Could Change The World. IFLScience. 2017. https://www.iflscience.com/chemistry/how-lsd-could-change-the-world/. 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. [Department of Energy’s Authority To Establish a Facility at Morgantown, West Virginia]. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 1981.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

1. Horaist DW. Estimating Seed Bank Responses to Changing Environmental Conditions in the Louisiana Coastal Zone. Doctoral dissertation. University of Louisiana; 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. Pilon M. Mexico Official Resigns. New York Times. 2012;:D2.

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 Pharmacology
ISSN (print)	1471-2210
Scope