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

Draaisma, D. (2015). Oliver Sacks (1933-2015). Nature 525, 188.

A journal article with 2 authors

Tani, K., and Stoltz, B. M. (2006). Synthesis and structural analysis of 2-quinuclidonium tetrafluoroborate. Nature 441, 731–734.

A journal article with 3 authors

Ide, S., Baltay, A., and Beroza, G. C. (2011). Shallow dynamic overshoot and energetic deep rupture in the 2011 Mw 9.0 Tohoku-Oki earthquake. Science 332, 1426–1429.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

He, K., Marsland, R., III, Upadhyayula, S., Song, E., Dang, S., Capraro, B. R., et al. (2017). Dynamics of phosphoinositide conversion in clathrin-mediated endocytic traffic. Nature 552, 410–414.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Olsson, A. (2005). Understanding Changing Telecommunications. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

An edited book

Carmona, R. A. (2006). Interest Rate Models: an Infinite Dimensional Stochastic Analysis Perspective. , ed. M. R. Tehranchi Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer.

A chapter in an edited book

Mosteller, F. (2010). “Who Wrote the Disputed Federalist Papers, Hamilton or Madison?,” in The Pleasures of Statistics: The Autobiography of Frederick Mosteller, eds. S. E. Fienberg, D. C. Hoaglin, and J. M. Tanur (New York, NY: Springer), 47–67.

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

Luntz, S. (2014). Huge Meta-Study Of Vaccines Reveals No Link To Autism. IFLScience. Available at: https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/huge-meta-study-vaccines-reveals-no-link-autism/ [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 (1989). Aviation Safety: FAA Action Plan for Chicago O’Hare International Airport. 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

Dusenberry, W. (2017). Integrating depth psychology in adolescent court-mandated treatment facilities: Increasing treatment efficacy and client engagement.

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

Paulson, M. (2017). How ‘Great Comet’ Burned Out. New York Times, C1.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Draaisma, 2015).
This sentence cites two references (Tani and Stoltz, 2006; Draaisma, 2015).

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

Two authors: (Tani and Stoltz, 2006)
Three or more authors: (He et al., 2017)

About the journal

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

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