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

Prieto GA. 2012. Geophysics. Imaging the deep Earth. Science 338:1037–1038.

A journal article with 2 authors

Elowitz M, Lim WA. 2010. Build life to understand it. Nature 468:889–890.

A journal article with 3 authors

Weis P, Driesner T, Heinrich CA. 2012. Porphyry-copper ore shells form at stable pressure-temperature fronts within dynamic fluid plumes. Science 338:1613–1616.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

McLean CY, Reno PL, Pollen AA, Bassan AI, Capellini TD, Guenther C, Indjeian VB, Lim X, Menke DB, Schaar BT, Wenger AM, Bejerano G, Kingsley DM. 2011. Human-specific loss of regulatory DNA and the evolution of human-specific traits. Nature 471:216–219.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Lhabitant F-S. 2004. Hedge Funds. John Wiley & Sons Ltd, Oxford, UK.

An edited book

2015. Very Massive Stars in the Local Universe. Springer International Publishing, Cham.

A chapter in an edited book

Li W, Zou Z. 2015. Cross-Reactivity, p. 67–92. In Tao, A, Raz, E (eds.), Allergy Bioinformatics. Springer Netherlands, Dordrecht.

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

Andrew E. 2014. Health Check: five supplements that may help with depression. IFLScience. IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/health-check-five-supplements-may-help-depression/. 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. NASA Procurement: Proposed Changes to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory Contract. NSIAD-93-178. 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

Obiedat M. 2015. Incrementally Sorted Lattice Data Structures. Doctoral dissertation. George Washington University, Washington, DC.

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

Kishkovsky S. 2008. Boris Fyodorov, 50, Dies; Guided Reforms in Russia. 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