How to format your references using the BMC Pregnancy and Childbirth citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for BMC Pregnancy and Childbirth. 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. Finlay BJ. Global dispersal of free-living microbial eukaryote species. Science. 2002;296:1061–3.

A journal article with 2 authors

1. Kaspi Y, Schneider T. Winter cold of eastern continental boundaries induced by warm ocean waters. Nature. 2011;471:621–4.

A journal article with 3 authors

1. Branzei D, Vanoli F, Foiani M. SUMOylation regulates Rad18-mediated template switch. Nature. 2008;456:915–20.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

1. Arias CF, Catalán P, Manrubia S, Cuesta JA. toyLIFE: a computational framework to study the multi-level organisation of the genotype-phenotype map. Sci Rep. 2014;4:7549.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

1. Tschannen-Moran B, Tschannen-Moran M. Evocative Coaching. San Francisco, CA, USA: Jossey-Bass; 2010.

An edited book

1. Zhu X, Zeichner K, editors. Preparing Teachers for the 21st Century. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer; 2013.

A chapter in an edited book

1. Landwehr C. Results of Workshops on Privacy Protection Technologies. In: Gal CS, Kantor PB, Lesk ME, editors. Protecting Persons While Protecting the People: Second Annual Workshop on Information Privacy and National Security, ISIPS 2008, New Brunswick, NJ, USA, May 12, 2008. Revised Selected Papers. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer; 2009. p. 45–56.

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 Pregnancy and Childbirth.

Blog post

1. Andrew E. Fossilized Feces Gives Clues To Ancient Microbes. IFLScience. 2014. https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/fossilized-feces-gives-clues-ancient-microbes/. 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. Space Station: Deteriorating Cost and Schedule Performance Under the Prime Contract. 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. Lin TS. The invisible “religious” minority: Working with the nonreligious bereaved. Doctoral dissertation. California State University, Long Beach; 2014.

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. Kenigsberg B. School Life. New York Times. 2017;:C5.

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 Pregnancy and Childbirth
Abbreviation	BMC Pregnancy Childbirth
ISSN (online)	1471-2393
Scope	Obstetrics and Gynaecology