How to format your references using the Letters in Applied Microbiology citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Letters in Applied Microbiology (LAM). 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

Schrag, D.P. (2009) Storage of carbon dioxide in offshore sediments. Science. 325, 1658–1659.

A journal article with 2 authors

Campbell, N. and Grayson, M. (2014) Nature Index 2014 china. Nature. 516, S49.

A journal article with 3 authors

Lineweaver, C.H., Fenner, Y. and Gibson, B.K. (2004) The galactic habitable zone and the age distribution of complex life in the Milky Way. Science. 303, 59–62.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Huber, H., Hohn, M.J., Rachel, R., Fuchs, T., Wimmer, V.C. and Stetter, K.O. (2002) A new phylum of Archaea represented by a nanosized hyperthermophilic symbiont. Nature. 417, 63–67.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Fell, G.J. (2013) Decoding the IT Value Problem. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

An edited book

Hansson, A. (2011) On-Chip Interconnect with aelite: Composable and Predictable Systems. Embedded Systems. New York, NY: Springer.

A chapter in an edited book

Oquendo, F., Leite, J. and Batista, T. (2016) Specifying the Structure of Software Architectures. In Software Architecture in Action: Designing and Executing Architectural Models with SysADL Grounded on the OMG SysML Standard, , Undergraduate Topics in Computer Science ed. Leite, J. and Batista, T. pp.37–64. Cham: Springer International Publishing.

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 Letters in Applied Microbiology.

Blog post

Hale, T. (2017) Svalbard Seed Vault Accepts 50,000 New Samples, Just In Case Doomsday Arrives [WWW Document]. IFLScience. URL https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/svalbard-seed-vault-accepts-50000-new-samples-just-in-case-doomsday-arrives/.

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 (1994) Air Traffic Control: Better Guidance Needed for Deciding Where to Locate Facilities and Equipment ( No. RCED-95-14). 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

Yendes, D.L. (2010) Remnants of Life. 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

Whiteside, K. (2017) Foes Get Together, and No One’s Fighting Like …. New York Times. SP11.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Schrag, 2009).
This sentence cites two references (Schrag, 2009; Campbell & Grayson, 2014).

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

Two authors: (Campbell & Grayson, 2014)
Three authors: (Lineweaver, Fenner & Gibson, 2004)
4 or more authors: (Huber et al., 2002)

About the journal

Full journal title	Letters in Applied Microbiology
ISSN (print)	0266-8254
ISSN (online)	1472-765X
Scope