How to format your references using the British Medical Bulletin citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for British Medical Bulletin. 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

Platt FM. Sphingolipid lysosomal storage disorders. Nature. 2014 Jun 5;510(7503):68–75.

A journal article with 2 authors

Overpeck J, Udall B. Climate change. Dry times ahead. Science. 2010 Jun 25;328(5986):1642–3.

A journal article with 3 authors

Heinsohn R, Legge S, Endler JA. Extreme reversed sexual dichromatism in a bird without sex role reversal. Science. 2005 Jul 22;309(5734):617–9.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Adrian L, Szewzyk U, Wecke J, Görisch H. Bacterial dehalorespiration with chlorinated benzenes. Nature. 2000 Nov 30;408(6812):580–3.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Bahgat G. Energy Security. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd; 2011.

An edited book

Barbara B, Imry Y, Sawatzky G, Stamp PCE, editors. Quantum Magnetism. Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands; 2008. XIII, 249 p. (NATO Science for Peace and Security Series, Series B: Physics and Biophysics).

A chapter in an edited book

Cyran KA. PNN for Molecular Level Selection Detection. In: Mastorakis N, Mladenov V, Kontargyri VT, editors. Proceedings of the European Computing Conference: Volume 1. Boston, MA: Springer US; 2009. p. 33–8. (Lecture Notes in Electrical Engineering).

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 Medical Bulletin.

Blog post

Luntz S. Roman Concrete Insight Could Help Build A Safer World. IFLScience. IFLScience; 2014.

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. Review of HEW Guidelines for Acquiring Automatic Data Processing Systems Under the Social Security Act. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 1979 Oct. Report No.: HRD-79-126.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Bennett MA. The Underrepresentation of Registered Nurses in Hospital CEO Positions: A Grounded Theory Study [Doctoral dissertation]. [Phoenix, AZ]: University of Phoenix; 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

Hollander S. Why the Smoke Doesn’t Get in Their Eyes. New York Times. 2009 Feb 22;CY6.

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 title	British Medical Bulletin
Abbreviation	Br. Med. Bull.
ISSN (print)	0007-1420
ISSN (online)	1471-8391
Scope	General Medicine