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

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

Hardie, D.G. (2010). Transcription. Targeting the core of transcription. Science 329: 1158–1159.

A journal article with 2 authors

Rodell, C.B., and Burdick, J.A. (2014). Materials science: Radicals promote magnetic gel assembly. Nature 514: 574–575.

A journal article with 3 authors

Dodds, P.S., Muhamad, R., and Watts, D.J. (2003). An experimental study of search in global social networks. Science 301: 827–829.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Wu, R., Cui, L., Chen, L., Wang, C., Cao, C., Sheng, G., et al. (2013). Effects of bio-Au nanoparticles on electrochemical activity of Shewanella oneidensis wild type and ΔomcA/mtrC mutant. Sci. Rep. 3: 3307.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Bains, G. (2015). Cultural DNA (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc).

An edited book

(2011). Assessment Reform in Education: Policy and Practice (Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands).

A chapter in an edited book

Yarden, A., Norris, S.P., and Phillips, L.M. (2015). Creating and Using Adapted Primary Literature. In Adapted Primary Literature: The Use of Authentic Scientific Texts in Secondary Schools, S.P. Norris, and L.M. Phillips, eds. (Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands), pp 83–108.

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 Pharmacology.

Blog post

Davis, J. (2017). Chimpanzees Craft ‘Dipping Sticks’ To Drink Hard To Reach Water (IFLScience).

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 (2000). Cooperative Research: Results of U.S.-Industry Partnership to Develop a New Generation of Vehicles (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office).

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Dias, J. (2014). Factors associated with poor oral health among older adults. Doctoral dissertation. California State University, Long Beach.

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

Novick, S.M. (2014). Shoppers Are Getting a Culinary Lift. New York Times LI9.

In-text citations

References should be cited in the text by name and year in parentheses:

This sentence cites one reference (Hardie, 2010).
This sentence cites two references (Hardie, 2010; Rodell and Burdick, 2014).

Here are examples of in-text citations with multiple authors:

Two authors: (Rodell and Burdick, 2014)
Three or more authors: (Wu et al., 2013)

About the journal

Full journal title	British Journal of Pharmacology
Abbreviation	Br. J. Pharmacol.
ISSN (print)	0007-1188
ISSN (online)	1476-5381
Scope	Pharmacology