How to format your references using the Journal of Biomedical Semantics citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Journal of Biomedical Semantics. 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

1. Stierle A. Materials science. Tracking corrosion cracking. Science. 2008;321:349–50.

A journal article with 2 authors

1. Peppe DJ, Royer DL. ATMOSPHERIC SCIENCE. Can climate feel the pressure? Science. 2015;348:1210–1.

A journal article with 3 authors

1. Zanardi I, Zifarelli G, Pusch M. An optical assay of the transport activity of ClC-7. Sci Rep. 2013;3:1231.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

1. Richter DD Jr, Jenkins DH, Karakash JT, Knight J, McCreery LR, Nemestothy KP. Resource policy. Wood energy in America. Science. 2009;323:1432–3.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

1. Knuth E. Trading Between the Lines. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.; 2011.

An edited book

1. Benirschke K. Pathology of the Human Placenta. 6th ed. 2012. Burton GJ, Baergen RN, editors. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer; 2012.

A chapter in an edited book

1. Harper RHR. The Metaphysics of Communications Overload. In: Murray-Smith R, editor. Mobile Social Signal Processing: First International Workshop, MSSP 2010, Lisbon, Portugal, September 7, 2010, Invited Papers. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer; 2014. p. 42–50.

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 Journal of Biomedical Semantics.

Blog post

1. Andrew E. How Understanding Breast Cancer At A Molecular Level Is Revolutionising Our Thinking [Internet]. IFLScience. IFLScience; 2015 [cited 2018 Oct 30]. https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/how-understanding-breast-cancer-molecular-level-revolutionising-our-thinking/. 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 Shuttle: Changes to the Solid Rocket Motor Contract. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 1988 Aug. Report No.: NSIAD-88-203.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

1. Kolaski GW. Cultural awareness and the U.S. military advisor in the Arab Middle East: A phenomenological study [Doctoral dissertation]. [Phoenix, AZ]: University of Phoenix; 2010.

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. Baker L. In Tacoma, A Residential Rebirth. New York Times. 2007 Jun 24;BU15.

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	Journal of Biomedical Semantics
Abbreviation	J. Biomed. Semantics
ISSN (online)	2041-1480
Scope