How to format your references using the Applied and Environmental Microbiology citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Applied and Environmental Microbiology (AEM). 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 references management programs.
BibTeX	BibTeX syles 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

Nedergaard M. 2013. Neuroscience. Garbage truck of the brain. Science 340:1529–1530.

A journal article with 2 authors

Lin Y, Zhang Z. 2014. Controlling the efficiency of trapping in a scale-free small-world network. Sci Rep 4:6274.

A journal article with 3 authors

Keppler H, Wiedenbeck M, Shcheka SS. 2003. Carbon solubility in olivine and the mode of carbon storage in the Earth’s mantle. Nature 424:414–416.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Cho B-K, Jain A, Gruner SM, Wiesner U. 2004. Mesophase structure-mechanical and ionic transport correlations in extended amphiphilic dendrons. Science 305:1598–1601.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Dimond B. 2016. Legal Aspects of Mental Capacity. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, Chichester, UK.

An edited book

2015. Same Sex Couples - Comparative Insights on Marriage and Cohabitation. Springer Netherlands, Dordrecht.

A chapter in an edited book

Stamper J, Barnes T, Croy M. 2010. Enhancing the Automatic Generation of Hints with Expert Seeding, p. 31–40. In Aleven, V, Kay, J, Mostow, J (eds.), Intelligent Tutoring Systems: 10th International Conference, ITS 2010, Pittsburgh, PA, USA, June 14-18, 2010, Proceedings, Part II. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg.

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 Applied and Environmental Microbiology.

Blog post

Fang J. 2015. Ceres’ Mystery Spots Are Even Stranger Than We Thought. IFLScience. IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/space/ceres-two-mystery-spots-are-not-same/. Retrieved 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. 1999. Year 2000 Computing Challenge: Concerns About Compliance Information on Biomedical Equipment. T-AIMD-99-209. U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Tse J. 2009. An explication of the Hilbert basis theorem and its relation to school mathematics. Doctoral dissertation. California State University, Long Beach, Long Beach, CA.

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

Walsh MW. 2015. Puerto Rico Debt Crisis Closes In on Jan. 1 Deadline. New York Times.

In-text citations

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

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	Applied and Environmental Microbiology
Abbreviation	Appl. Environ. Microbiol.
ISSN (print)	0099-2240
ISSN (online)	1098-5336
Scope	Food Science Biotechnology Ecology Applied Microbiology and Biotechnology