How to format your references using the Frontiers in Microbiological Chemistry citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Frontiers in Microbiological Chemistry. 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

Rahmstorf, S. (2002). Ocean circulation and climate during the past 120,000 years. Nature 419, 207–214.

A journal article with 2 authors

Atkins, J. F., and Gesteland, R. F. (2001). mRNA readout at 40. Nature 414, 693.

A journal article with 3 authors

Latimer, A. M., Silander, J. A., Jr, and Cowling, R. M. (2005). Neutral ecological theory reveals isolation and rapid speciation in a biodiversity hot spot. Science 309, 1722–1725.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Nakano, H., Hibino, T., Oji, T., Hara, Y., and Amemiya, S. (2003). Larval stages of a living sea lily (stalked crinoid echinoderm). Nature 421, 158–160.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Hoffmann, K. (2005). System Integration. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

An edited book

Ehrenfeld, J. M., Urman, R. D., and Segal, S. eds. (2016). Anesthesia Student Survival Guide: A Case-Based Approach., 2nd ed. 2016. Cham: Springer International Publishing.

A chapter in an edited book

Stickler, B. A., and Schachinger, E. (2016). “Ordinary Differential Equations: Initial Value Problems,” in Basic Concepts in Computational Physics, ed. E. Schachinger (Cham: Springer International Publishing), 63–83.

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 Microbiological Chemistry.

Blog post

Andrew, D. (2016). Lost In Translation: Five Common English Phrases You May Be Using Incorrectly. 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 (1995). Inspectors General: Alleged Misconduct by NASA Inspector General. 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

Boyd, J. L. (2017). Interactive simulations: Improving learning retention in knowledge-based online training courses. 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

Wagner, J. (2017). How to Endure Extra Innings? For Granderson, It’s Sip by Sip. New York Times, D1.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Rahmstorf, 2002).
This sentence cites two references (Atkins and Gesteland, 2001; Rahmstorf, 2002).

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

Two authors: (Atkins and Gesteland, 2001)
Three or more authors: (Nakano et al., 2003)

About the journal

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