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

Walsh, C. (2001). Enabling the chemistry of life. Nature 409, 226–231.

A journal article with 2 authors

Zhou, Z., and Zhang, F. (2002). A long-tailed, seed-eating bird from the Early Cretaceous of China. Nature 418, 405–409.

A journal article with 3 authors

Balachandran, S., Thomas, E., and Barber, G. N. (2004). A FADD-dependent innate immune mechanism in mammalian cells. Nature 432, 401–405.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Grimm, N. B., Faeth, S. H., Golubiewski, N. E., Redman, C. L., Wu, J., Bai, X., et al. (2008). Global change and the ecology of cities. Science 319, 756–760.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Walkenbach, J. (2010). Excel® 2010 Power Programming with VBA. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley Publishing, Inc.

An edited book

Leeuw, J. de, and Meijer, E. eds. (2008). Handbook of Multilevel Analysis. New York, NY: Springer.

A chapter in an edited book

Rovira-Esteva, M., Pardo, L. C., Tamarit, J. L. L., and Bermejo, F. J. (2010). “Neutron Diffraction as a Tool to Explore the Free Energy Landscape in Orientationally Disordered Phases,” in Metastable Systems under Pressure, eds. S. Rzoska, A. Drozd-Rzoska, and V. Mazur (Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands), 63–77.

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

Andrew, E. (2014). Baby Gorilla Born By Emergency C-Section. IFLScience. Available at: https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/baby-gorilla-born-emergency-c-section/ (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 (1979). Federal Program To Strengthen Developing Institutions of Higher Education Lacks Direction. 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

Bratton, E. W. (2012). Clinical management and outcomes of patients in the Duke Cryptococcosis Clinical Cohort, 1996 - 2009. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina.

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

Crow, K. (2002). When the City Says Show Me, It Means It. New York Times, 146.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Walsh, 2001).
This sentence cites two references (Walsh, 2001; Zhou and Zhang, 2002).

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

Two authors: (Zhou and Zhang, 2002)
Three or more authors: (Grimm et al., 2008)

About the journal

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