How to format your references using the Current Opinion in Microbiology citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Current Opinion in Microbiology. 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

Anand P: Public health. Decision-making when science is ambiguous. Science 2002, 295:1839.

A journal article with 2 authors

Lu J, Zuo Y: Neuroscience: Forgetfulness illuminated. Nature 2015, 525:324–325.

A journal article with 3 authors

Sherwood SC, Lanzante JR, Meyer CL: Radiosonde daytime biases and late-20th century warming. Science 2005, 309:1556–1559.

A journal article with 11 or more authors

Senthilnathan J, Liu Y-F, Rao KS, Yoshimura M: Submerged liquid plasma for the synchronized reduction and functionalization of graphene oxide. Sci Rep 2014, 4:4395.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Massari M, Gianfrate G, Zanetti L: Corporate Valuation. John Wiley & Sons, Inc.; 2016.

An edited book

Duindam V: Modeling and Control of Complex Physical Systems: The Port-Hamiltonian Approach. Springer; 2009.

A chapter in an edited book

Spaccasassi C, Koutavas V: Towards Efficient Abstractions for Concurrent Consensus. In Trends in Functional Programming: 14th International Symposium, TFP 2013, Provo, UT, USA, May 14-16, 2013, Revised Selected Papers. Edited by McCarthy J. Springer; 2014:76–90.

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 Current Opinion in Microbiology.

Blog post

Fang J: 98 Never-Before-Seen Beetle Species Discovered in Indonesia. 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: B-2 Costs. U.S. Government Printing Office; 1993.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Dulick KC: Self-neglect among the elderly: Knowledge and perceptions of MSW students. 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

Crow K: Some Want a Cultural Hub; Others See a Center on Steroids. New York Times 2002,

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	Current Opinion in Microbiology
Abbreviation	Curr. Opin. Microbiol.
ISSN (print)	1369-5274
ISSN (online)	1879-0364
Scope	Microbiology Infectious Diseases Microbiology (medical)