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

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

Vespignani A. Predicting the behavior of techno-social systems. Science 2009;325:425–8.

A journal article with 2 authors

Haney CH, Ausubel FM. MICROBIOME. Plant microbiome blueprints. Science 2015;349:788–9.

A journal article with 3 authors

Messer H, Zinevich A, Alpert P. Environmental monitoring by wireless communication networks. Science 2006;312:713.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Römer P, Hahn S, Jordan T et al. Plant pathogen recognition mediated by promoter activation of the pepper Bs3 resistance gene. Science 2007;318:645–8.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Barkham R. Real Estate and Globalisation. Oxford, UK: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012.

An edited book

Chen Y-P, Lim M-H eds. Linkage in Evolutionary Computation. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer, 2008.

A chapter in an edited book

Hu M, Wu Z-Q, Liu Y. The fish fauna of mountain streams in the Guanshan National Nature Reserve, Jiangxi, China. In: Noakes DLG, Romero A, Zhao Y, et al. (eds.). Chinese Fishes. Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands, 2009, 23–7.

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 Reviews.

Blog post

Andrew E. Supersymmetry Dealt Another Blow By LHC. 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. Aviation and the Environment: FAA’s and NASA’s Research and Development Plans for Noise Reduction Are Aligned but the Prospects of Achieving Noise Reduction Goals Are Uncertain. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 2008.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Smith CA. Teacher and Student Perceptions of Bullying at Leclaire School. 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

Sisario B. Lady Gaga Will Replace Beyoncé at Coachella. New York Times. March 1, 2017:C3.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Vespignani 2009).
This sentence cites two references (Vespignani 2009; Haney and Ausubel 2015).

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

Two authors: (Haney and Ausubel 2015)
Three authors: (Messer, Zinevich and Alpert 2006)
4 or more authors: (Römer et al. 2007)

About the journal

Full journal title	FEMS Microbiology Reviews
Abbreviation	FEMS Microbiol. Rev.
ISSN (print)	0168-6445
ISSN (online)	1574-6976
Scope	Microbiology Infectious Diseases