How to format your references using the Frontiers in Microbial Physiology and Metabolism citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Frontiers in Microbial Physiology and Metabolism. 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

Hill, W. G. (2005). Genetics. A century of corn selection. Science 307, 683–684.

A journal article with 2 authors

Stahl, A. E., and Feigenson, L. (2015). Cognitive development. Observing the unexpected enhances infants’ learning and exploration. Science 348, 91–94.

A journal article with 3 authors

Brennan, M. D., Cheong, R., and Levchenko, A. (2012). Systems biology. How information theory handles cell signaling and uncertainty. Science 338, 334–335.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Wilen, C. B., Lee, S., Hsieh, L. L., Orchard, R. C., Desai, C., Hykes, B. L., Jr, et al. (2018). Tropism for tuft cells determines immune promotion of norovirus pathogenesis. Science 360, 204–208.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Kontush, A., and Chapman, M. J. (2011). High-Density Lipoproteins. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

An edited book

Wang, Z.-W. ed. (2008). Molecular Mechanisms of Neurotransmitter Release. Totowa, NJ: Humana Press.

A chapter in an edited book

Parui, U., and Sanil, V. (2016). “Introduction to Windows Server Failover Clustering,” in Pro SQL Server Always On Availability Groups, ed. V. Sanil (Berkeley, CA: Apress), 45–52.

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 Microbial Physiology and Metabolism.

Blog post

Andrew, E. (2014). First “Super Moon” Of The Year Will Be Visible July 12. IFLScience.

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 (1980). Increasing Costs, Competition May Hinder U.S. Position of Leadership in High Energy Physics. 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

Gikiri, M. M. (2012). Effects of attitude, norms, and perceived behavior control on intentions to become a teen father. Minneapolis, MN: Capella University.

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

Kenigsberg, B. (2017). War Ends, but Divisions Remain. New York Times, C6.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Hill, 2005).
This sentence cites two references (Hill, 2005; Stahl and Feigenson, 2015).

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

Two authors: (Stahl and Feigenson, 2015)
Three or more authors: (Wilen et al., 2018)

About the journal

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