How to format your references using the Journal of Bacteriology citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Journal of Bacteriology. 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	Download the output style file
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

Bader J. 2014. Climate science: The origin of regional Arctic warming. Nature 509:167–168.

A journal article with 2 authors

Graham S, Hegde D. 2015. Intellectual Property. Disclosing patents’ secrets. Science 347:236–237.

A journal article with 3 authors

Sha WEI, Li X, Choy WCH. 2014. Breaking the space charge limit in organic solar cells by a novel plasmonic-electrical concept. Sci Rep 4:6236.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Kratchmarova I, Blagoev B, Haack-Sorensen M, Kassem M, Mann M. 2005. Mechanism of divergent growth factor effects in mesenchymal stem cell differentiation. Science 308:1472–1477.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Ronen T. 2011. The Positive Power of Imagery. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, Chichester, UK.

An edited book

Gutbrod R. 2012. The Software Dilemma: Balancing Creativity and Control on the Path to Sustainable Software. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg.

A chapter in an edited book

Frost WN, Brandon CJ, Bruno AM, Humphries MD, Moore-Kochlacs C, Sejnowski TJ, Wang J, Hill ES. 2015. Monitoring Spiking Activity of Many Individual Neurons in Invertebrate Ganglia, p. 127–145. In Canepari, M, Zecevic, D, Bernus, O (eds.), Membrane Potential Imaging in the Nervous System and Heart. Springer International Publishing, Cham.

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 Journal of Bacteriology.

Blog post

Fang J. 2014. New Species Of Mammal Discovered in Africa. IFLScience. IFLScience. Retrieved 30 October 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. 1985. Proprietary School Compliance With Requirements of the Pell Grant Program. 127542. 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

Whitbeck DC. 2013. Mapping of Sonoran Desert vegetation communities of San Cristobal Valley and southern Sentinel Plains, Barry M. Goldwater Range and variables influencing route proliferation in the Barry M. Goldwater Range’s San Cristobal Valley. Doctoral dissertation. University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ.

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

Robbins L. 2017. Despite ‘Sanctuary City’ Policy, Mayor Says New York Complies With U.S. Law. New York Times.

In-text citations

References should be cited in the text by sequential numbers in parentheses:

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	Journal of Bacteriology
Abbreviation	J. Bacteriol.
ISSN (print)	0021-9193
ISSN (online)	1098-5530
Scope	Molecular Biology Microbiology