How to format your references using the Metabolic Engineering Communications citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Metabolic Engineering Communications. 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	Find the style here: output styles overview
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

Ide, S., 2010. Striations, duration, migration and tidal response in deep tremor. Nature 466, 356–359.

A journal article with 2 authors

Turgeon, S.C., Creaser, R.A., 2008. Cretaceous oceanic anoxic event 2 triggered by a massive magmatic episode. Nature 454, 323–326.

A journal article with 3 authors

Chisholm, M.F., Kumar, S., Hazzledine, P., 2005. Dislocations in complex materials. Science 307, 701–703.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Li, W., Scott, A.P., Siefkes, M.J., Yan, H., Liu, Q., Yun, S.-S., Gage, D.A., 2002. Bile Acid secreted by male sea lamprey that acts as a sex pheromone. Science 296, 138–141.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Suárez, A., 2008. Analysis and Design of Autonomous Microwave Circuits. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ.

An edited book

Gabbay, D.M., 2010. Logical Tools for Handling Change in Agent-Based Systems, Cognitive Technologies. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg.

A chapter in an edited book

Metcalfe, G., Olivetti, N., Gabbay, D., 2009. Gentzen Systems, in: Olivetti, N., Gabbay, D. (Eds.), Proof Theory for Fuzzy Logics, Applied Logic Series. Springer Netherlands, Dordrecht, pp. 67–100.

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 Metabolic Engineering Communications.

Blog post

Andrew, E., 2015. Computer Program Cannot Be Beaten At Texas Hold ’Em Poker [WWW Document]. IFLScience. URL https://www.iflscience.com/technology/unbeatable-computer-program-has-solved-texas-hold-em-poker/ (accessed 10.30.18).

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, 1981. The Army’s Battery Computer System (No. MASAD-81-18). 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

Ray, S.J., 2017. Departmentalized Classroom Environments Versus Traditional Classroom Environments in Second Through Fourth Grades: A Quantitative Analysis (Doctoral dissertation). Lindenwood University, St. Charles, MO.

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

Williams, J., 2017. Australia’s Property Boom Makes Publisher a Target. New York Times B1.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Ide, 2010).
This sentence cites two references (Ide, 2010; Turgeon and Creaser, 2008).

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

Two authors: (Turgeon and Creaser, 2008)
Three or more authors: (Li et al., 2002)

About the journal

Full journal title	Metabolic Engineering Communications
Abbreviation	Metab. Eng. Commun.
ISSN (print)	2214-0301
Scope