How to format your references using the Frontiers in Aquatic Microbiology citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Frontiers in Aquatic 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	Find the style here: output styles overview
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

Powell, K. (2003). Short supply. Nature 423, 566–567.

A journal article with 2 authors

Auer, S., and Frenkel, D. (2001). Suppression of crystal nucleation in polydisperse colloids due to increase of the surface free energy. Nature 413, 711–713.

A journal article with 3 authors

Jia, C. L., Lentzen, M., and Urban, K. (2003). Atomic-resolution imaging of oxygen in perovskite ceramics. Science 299, 870–873.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Long, S. B., Tao, X., Campbell, E. B., and MacKinnon, R. (2007). Atomic structure of a voltage-dependent K+ channel in a lipid membrane-like environment. Nature 450, 376–382.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Garton, A. F. (2008). Exploring Cognitive Development: The Child as Problem Solver. Oxford, UK: Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

An edited book

Mély, Y., and Duportail, G. eds. (2013). Fluorescent Methods to Study Biological Membranes. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer.

A chapter in an edited book

Wahid, S. M., Mukherji, A., and Shrestha, A. (2016). “Climate Change Adaptation, Water Infrastructure Development, and Responsive Governance in the Himalayas: The Case Study of Nepal’s Koshi River Basin,” in Increasing Resilience to Climate Variability and Change: The Roles of Infrastructure and Governance in the Context of Adaptation Water Resources Development and Management., ed. C. Tortajada (Singapore: Springer), 61–80.

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 Frontiers in Aquatic Microbiology.

Blog post

Davis, J. (2015). Mushrooms’ Spores Might Help Make It Rain. IFLScience. Available at: https://www.iflscience.com/environment/mushrooms-spores-could-be-inducing-clouds-form-rain/ [Accessed October 30, 2018].

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 (2010). Higher Education: Stronger Federal Oversight Needed to Enforce Ban on Incentive Payments to School Recruiters. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Arnold, J. M. (2009). Accountability in British Columbia: A case study connecting policy and practice.

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

Fountain, H., and Schwartz, J. (2016). Spiking Temperatures in the Arctic Startle Scientists. New York Times, A4.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Powell, 2003).
This sentence cites two references (Auer and Frenkel, 2001; Powell, 2003).

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

Two authors: (Auer and Frenkel, 2001)
Three or more authors: (Long et al., 2007)

About the journal

Full journal title	Frontiers in Aquatic Microbiology
Abbreviation	Front. Microbiol.
ISSN (online)	1664-302X
Scope	Microbiology Microbiology (medical)