How to format your references using the Journal of Clinical Microbiology citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Journal of Clinical Microbiology (JCM). 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

Bar-Ziv R. 2007. Materials science. DNA circuits get up to speed. Science 318:1078–1079.

A journal article with 2 authors

Ciesla FJ, Sandford SA. 2012. Organic synthesis via irradiation and warming of ice grains in the solar nebula. Science 336:452–454.

A journal article with 3 authors

Suma K, Sumiyoshi Y, Endo Y. 2006. The rotational spectrum of the water-hydroperoxy radical (H2O-HO2) complex. Science 311:1278–1281.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Prystowsky M, Feeney K, Kawachi N, Montagna C, Willmott M, Wasson C, Antkowiak M, Loudig O, Parish J. 2013. Inhibition of Plk1 and Cyclin B1 expression results in panobinostat-induced G₂ delay and mitotic defects. Sci Rep 3:2640.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Mackevičius V. 2014. Integral and Measure. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ.

An edited book

2016. Assembling and Governing the Higher Education Institution: Democracy, Social Justice and Leadership in Global Higher Education. Palgrave Macmillan UK, London.

A chapter in an edited book

Olmo GJ. 2016. Nonsingular Black Holes in Palatini Extensions of General Relativity, p. 183–219. In Kallosh, R, Orazi, E (eds.), Theoretical Frontiers in Black Holes and Cosmology: Theoretical Perspective in High Energy Physics. 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 Clinical Microbiology.

Blog post

O`Callaghan J. 2017. The Human Sense Of Smell Is Better Than You Think. 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. 1993. Amtrak Safety: Amtrak Should Implement Minimum Safety Standards for Passenger Cars. RCED-93-196. 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

Swenson MD. 2012. Second generation Latinos and the perceived barriers to college enrollment. Doctoral dissertation. California State University, Long Beach, Long Beach, CA.

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

Burghardt LF. 2007. Hempstead Board Rejects Belmont Park Flea Market. 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 Clinical Microbiology
Abbreviation	J. Clin. Microbiol.
ISSN (print)	0095-1137
ISSN (online)	1098-660X
Scope	Microbiology (medical)