How to format your references using the British Journal of Anaesthesia citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for British Journal of Anaesthesia (BJA). 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:

PaperpileThe citation style is built in and you can choose it in Settings > Citation Style or Paperpile > Citation Style in Google Docs.
EndNoteDownload the output style file
Mendeley, Zotero, Papers, and othersThe style is either built in or you can download a CSL file that is supported by most reference managers.
BibTeXBibTeX 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.
Quirrenbach A. Astronomy. Seeing the surfaces of stars. Science 2007; 317: 325–6
A journal article with 2 authors
1.
Casadevall A, Pirofski L-A. Microbiology: Ditch the term pathogen. Nature 2014; 516: 165–6
A journal article with 3 authors
1.
Muchnik L, Aral S, Taylor SJ. Social influence bias: a randomized experiment. Science 2013; 341: 647–51
A journal article with 7 or more authors
1.
Ono T, Kumamoto A, Nakagawa H, et al. Lunar radar sounder observations of subsurface layers under the nearside maria of the Moon. Science 2009; 323: 909–12

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book
1.
Liautaud M. Breaking Through. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc; 2016.
An edited book
1.
Fitzal F, Schrenk P, editors. Oncoplastic Breast Surgery: A Guide to Clinical Practice. Vienna: Springer; 2010.
A chapter in an edited book
1.
Leong W, Wang D-A. Engineering Biomaterials for Anchorage-Dependent and Non-anchorage-Dependent Therapeutic Cell Delivery in Translational Medicine. In: Cai W, editor. Engineering in Translational Medicine London: Springer; 2014. p. 103–31

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 British Journal of Anaesthesia.

Blog post
1.
Fang J. Ancient Hippo-Sized Mammal Was A Suction Feeder [Internet]. IFLScience. IFLScience; 2015 [cited 2018 Oct 30]. Available from: https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/ancient-hippo-sized-mammal-was-suction-feeder/

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. Federal Research: Peer Review Practices at Federal Science Agencies Vary. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 1999 Mar Report No.: RCED-99-99.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation
1.
Ringberg JE. Daily life at Cerro León, an Early Intermediate period highland settlement in the Moche Valley, Peru [Doctoral dissertation]. [Chapel Hill, NC]: University of North Carolina; 2012.

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.
Shear MD, Cooper H, Schmitt E. White House Claims Syria Is Preparing Poison Attack. New York Times 2017; A8

In-text citations

References should be cited in the text by sequential numbers in superscript:

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 titleBritish Journal of Anaesthesia
AbbreviationBr. J. Anaesth.
ISSN (print)0007-0912
ISSN (online)1471-6771
ScopeAnesthesiology and Pain Medicine

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