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

Smith MS. Change the approach to sustainable development. Nature 2012;483:375.

A journal article with 2 authors

Smith AJ, Schwappach B. Cell biology. Think vesicular chloride. Science 2010;328:1364–5.

A journal article with 3 authors

Rowe TB, Macrini TE, Luo Z-X. Fossil evidence on origin of the mammalian brain. Science 2011;332:955–7.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Zeng J, Mohammadreza A, Gao W et al. A minimally invasive method for retrieving single adherent cells of different types from cultures. Sci Rep 2014;4:5424.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Bielecki TR, Brigo D, Patras F. Credit Risk Frontiers. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2011.

An edited book

Bösch D. Prove Di Funzionalitä Respiratoria: Realizzazione, Interpretazione, Referti. Criée C-P (ed.). Milano: Springer, 2009.

A chapter in an edited book

Spitz F. Control of Vertebrate Hox Clusters by Remote and Global Cis-Acting Regulatory Sequences. In: Deutsch JS (ed.). Hox Genes: Studies from the 20th to the 21st Century. New York, NY: Springer, 2010, 63–78.

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

O`Callaghan J. NASA Study Reveals How Mars Turned From A Habitable World Into A Dead Planet. 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. Surface Transportation: Availability of Intercity Bus Service Continues to Decline. 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

Dunbar S. Sideshow: An alluring dichotomy of illusion and humanity. 2013.

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

Billard M. Sunsets and Pink Dolphins Along the Amazon. New York Times. April 13, 2014:TR12.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Smith 2012).
This sentence cites two references (Smith and Schwappach 2010; Smith 2012).

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

Two authors: (Smith and Schwappach 2010)
Three authors: (Rowe, Macrini and Luo 2011)
4 or more authors: (Zeng 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