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

Pertsev NA. Origin of easy magnetization switching in magnetic tunnel junctions with voltage-controlled interfacial anisotropy. Sci Rep 2013;3:2757.

A journal article with 2 authors

Bernays EA, Singer MS. Insect defences: taste alteration and endoparasites. Nature 2005;436:476.

A journal article with 3 authors

Garner EC, Campbell CS, Mullins RD. Dynamic instability in a DNA-segregating prokaryotic actin homolog. Science 2004;306:1021–5.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Wang JJ, Hu JM, Ma J et al. Full 180° magnetization reversal with electric fields. Sci Rep 2014;4:7507.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Jacobsson M, Niemegeers I, Heemstra de Groot S. Personal Networks. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, 2010.

An edited book

David R. Discrete, Continuous, and Hybrid Petri Nets. Alla H (ed.). Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer, 2010.

A chapter in an edited book

Cheng J, Smith LP. Airway and Aerodigestive Tract. In: Cheng J, Bent JP (eds.). Endoscopic Atlas of Pediatric Otolaryngology. Cham: Springer International Publishing, 2016, 39–59.

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. Are Some Species Just Too Wild For A Happy Life In Captivity? 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. School Meal Programs: Revenue and Expense Information from Selected States. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 2003.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Goldberg AL. The Seriously Ill Patient’s Broken Care Continuum: One Community’s Action Response. 2017.

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

Kelly M. PRESIDENT MOVES IN FAVOR OF LABOR. New York Times. February 3, 1993:A17.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Pertsev 2013).
This sentence cites two references (Bernays and Singer 2005; Pertsev 2013).

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

Two authors: (Bernays and Singer 2005)
Three authors: (Garner, Campbell and Mullins 2004)
4 or more authors: (Wang et al. 2014)

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