How to format your references using the mBio citation style

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

Ashwell M. 2000. Elsie Widdowson (1906-2000). Nature 406:844.

A journal article with 2 authors

Yan K, Fujita M. 2015. CATALYSIS. A speedy marriage in supramolecular catalysis. Science 350:1165–1166.

A journal article with 3 authors

Bean JL, Kempton EM-R, Homeier D. 2010. A ground-based transmission spectrum of the super-Earth exoplanet GJ 1214b. Nature 468:669–672.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Oldfield TEE, Smith RJ, Harrop SR, Leader-Williams N. 2003. Field sports and conservation in the United Kingdom. Nature 423:531–533.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Liu J, Dong X, Chen X, Tong X, Zhang X, Xu S. 2016. Fault Location and Service Restoration for Electrical Distribution Systems. John Wiley & Sons Singapore Pte. Ltd, Singapore.

An edited book

2009. Ecological Impacts of Non-Native Invertebrates and Fungi on Terrestrial Ecosystems. Springer Netherlands, Dordrecht.

A chapter in an edited book

Takada T, Nakamura M, Yamana K. 2016. DNA-Assisted Multichromophore Assembly, p. 101–121. In Nakatani, K, Tor, Y (eds.), Modified Nucleic Acids. 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 mBio.

Blog post

Fang J. 2015. This Guy Just Raised The Cost Of An HIV Drug By 5000%. IFLScience. IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/price-parasite-fighting-drug-jumps-1350-750-pill/. 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. 1988. Space Exploration: Cost, Schedule, and Performance of NASA’s Magellan Mission to Venus. NSIAD-88-130FS. 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

Schenkelberg V. 2010. Cultural competence training: A grant proposal. 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

Kelly SR. 2014. How the Carolinas Fixed Their Blurred Lines. 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	mBio
Abbreviation	MBio
ISSN (online)	2150-7511
Scope	Microbiology Virology