How to format your references using the Future Microbiology citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Future 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

Ellis GF. Dennis Sciama (1926-99). Nature. 403(6771), 722 (2000).

A journal article with 2 authors

Sugimoto N, Nagaosa N. Spin-orbit echo. Science. 336(6087), 1413–1416 (2012).

A journal article with 3 authors

Roseboom W, Kawabe T, Nishida S. The cross-modal double flash illusion depends on featural similarity between cross-modal inducers. Sci. Rep. 3, 3437 (2013).

A journal article with 7 or more authors

McSween HY Jr, Grove TL, Lentz RC, et al. Geochemical evidence for magmatic water within Mars from pyroxenes in the Shergotty meteorite. Nature. 409(6819), 487–490 (2001).

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Joyce PM, Lipton D. Lamentations Through the Centuries. Blackwell Publishing Ltd, Oxford.

An edited book

Boullata JI, Armenti VT, editors. Handbook of Drug-Nutrient Interactions. 2nd ed. Humana Press, Totowa, NJ.

A chapter in an edited book

Lysko AA, Masonta MT, Johnson DL. The Television White Space Opportunity in Southern Africa: From Field Measurements to Quantifying White Spaces. In: White Space Communication: Advances, Developments and Engineering Challenges. Mishra AK, Johnson DL (Eds.), Springer International Publishing, Cham, 75–116 (2015).

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 Future Microbiology.

Blog post

Fang J. LED Street Lights Thwart Moths’ Bat-Evading Tactics. IFLScience (2015).

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. National Airspace System: Long-Term Capacity Planning Needed Despite Recent Reduction in Flight Delays. U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Schmisseur BE. An Evaluation of Noise Reduction Effectiveness in Four Digital Hearing Aids. (2002).

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

Branch J. Fans, Please Rise (No, Not for Beer). New York Times, D1 (2017).

In-text citations

References should be cited in the text by sequential numbers in square brackets:

This sentence cites one reference [1].
This sentence cites two references [1,2].
This sentence cites four references [1–4].

About the journal

Full journal title	Future Microbiology
Abbreviation	Future Microbiol.
ISSN (print)	1746-0913
ISSN (online)	1746-0921
Scope	Microbiology Microbiology (medical)