How to format your references using the FEMS Microbiology Ecology citation style

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

Midgley PA. Materials science. Electronic bonding revealed by electron diffraction. Science 2011;331:1528–9.

A journal article with 2 authors

de Bono JS, Ashworth A. Translating cancer research into targeted therapeutics. Nature 2010;467:543–9.

A journal article with 3 authors

van Zuilen MA, Lepland A, Arrhenius G. Reassessing the evidence for the earliest traces of life. Nature 2002;418:627–30.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Lal R, Griffin M, Apt J et al. Ecology. Managing soil carbon. Science 2004;304:393.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Harris J. The Utopian Globalists. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 2013.

An edited book

Huang W. Adaptive Moving Mesh Methods. Russell RD (ed.). New York, NY: Springer, 2011.

A chapter in an edited book

Schorn P. Interfaces @ Supply Chain Event Management. In: Ijioui R, Emmerich H, Ceyp M (eds.). Strategies and Tactics in Supply Chain Event Management. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer, 2008, 51–63.

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 FEMS Microbiology Ecology.

Blog post

Andrew E. Watch Tigers Frolic In A Pool After Being Rescued From Cages. IFLScience 2015.

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. Aircraft Certification: Limited Progress on Developing International Design Standards. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1992.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Garatli AA. What are the necessary skills for leading an online business in Saudi Arabia? 2014.

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

Dinardo K. Tom Allen on His 32-Country Solo Bike Ride and the Video He Made About It. New York Times. February 23, 2014:TR3.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Midgley 2011).
This sentence cites two references (de Bono and Ashworth 2010; Midgley 2011).

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

Two authors: (de Bono and Ashworth 2010)
Three authors: (van Zuilen, Lepland and Arrhenius 2002)
4 or more authors: (Lal et al. 2004)

About the journal

Full journal title	FEMS Microbiology Ecology
Abbreviation	FEMS Microbiol. Ecol.
ISSN (print)	0168-6496
ISSN (online)	1574-6941
Scope	Ecology Applied Microbiology and Biotechnology Microbiology

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