How to format your references using the BMJ Quality Improvement Reports citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for BMJ Quality Improvement Reports. 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	Find the style here: output styles overview
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

Chaudhury A. Plant genetics: hothead healer and extragenomic information. Nature. 2005;437:E1; discussion E2.

A journal article with 2 authors

Eaton DW, Frederiksen A. Seismic evidence for convection-driven motion of the North American plate. Nature. 2007;446:428–31.

A journal article with 3 authors

Long JCS, Loy F, Morgan MG. Policy: Start research on climate engineering. Nature. 2015;518:29–31.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Kim HJ, Oh SA, Brownfield L, et al. Control of plant germline proliferation by SCF(FBL17) degradation of cell cycle inhibitors. Nature. 2008;455:1134–7.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Burd B. Java® For Dummies®. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley Publishing, Inc. 2011.

An edited book

Gussak I, Antzelevitch C, Wilde AAM, et al., editors. Electrical Diseases of the Heart: Genetics, Mechanisms, Treatment, Prevention. London: Springer 2008.

A chapter in an edited book

Liu W, Fu B, Liu X, et al. Numerical Calculation and Analysis of Influencing Factors on Waist Force of Armored Vehicle Driver. In: Long S, Dhillon BS, eds. Proceedings of the 15th International Conference on Man–Machine–Environment System Engineering. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer 2015:39–47.

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 BMJ Quality Improvement Reports.

Blog post

Andrew E. The Journey To The Other Side Of Absolute Zero. IFLScience. 2014. (accessed 30 October 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

Government Accountability Office. NASA Must Reconsider Operations Pricing Policy To Compensate for Cost Growth on the Space Transportation System. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office 1982.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

George KG. Revisiting ‘The Blue Line Blues’: Transit-Oriented Development in Inner-City Areas of Los Angeles County, 2000-2016. 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

Robbins L. Yemeni-Americans Sue Over Passport Woes. New York Times. 2015;A19.

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	BMJ Quality Improvement Reports
Abbreviation	BMJ Qual. Improv. Rep.
ISSN (online)	2050-1315
Scope