How to format your references using the Metabolism citation style

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

[1]

Holt RD. Evolutionary biology. Use it or lose it. Nature 2000;407:689–90.

A journal article with 2 authors

[1]

Weaver AJ, Hillaire-Marcel C. Ocean science. Global warming and the next ice age. Science 2004;304:400–2.

A journal article with 3 authors

[1]

Kumarevel T, Mizuno H, Kumar PKR. Structural basis of HutP-mediated anti-termination and roles of the Mg2+ ion and L-histidine ligand. Nature 2005;434:183–91.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

[1]

Munschauer M, Nguyen CT, Sirokman K, Hartigan CR, Hogstrom L, Engreitz JM, et al. Publisher Correction: The NORAD lncRNA assembles a topoisomerase complex critical for genome stability. Nature 2018.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

[1]

Yu SF. Analysis and Design of Vertical Cavity Surface Emitting Lasers. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.; 2005.

An edited book

[1]

Zubelzu S. Carbon Footprint and Urban Planning: Incorporating Methodologies to Assess the Influence of the Urban Master Plan on the Carbon Footprint of the City. Cham: Springer International Publishing; 2016.

A chapter in an edited book

[1]

Tierny J, Günther D, Pascucci V. Optimal General Simplification of Scalar Fields on Surfaces. In: Bennett J, Vivodtzev F, Pascucci V, editors. Topological and Statistical Methods for Complex Data: Tackling Large-Scale, High-Dimensional, and Multivariate Data Spaces, Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer; 2015, p. 57–71.

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 Metabolism.

Blog post

[1]

Andrew E. Researchers Strap Weighted Tail to Chickens to Understand Dinosaur Movements. IFLScience 2014.

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

[1]

Government Accountability Office. Comments on Proposed FPR Subpart. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 1981.

Theses and dissertations

Theses including Ph.D. dissertations, Master's theses or Bachelor theses follow the basic format outlined below.

Doctoral dissertation

[1]

Kurulugama RT. Overtone mobility spectrometry. Doctoral dissertation. Indiana University, 2009.

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

[1]

Vecsey G. A Heady Nightcap in a City Not Known for Sleeping. New York Times 2012:SP5.

In-text citations

References should be cited in the text by sequential numbers in square brackets:

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	Metabolism
Abbreviation	Metabolism
ISSN (print)	0026-0495
Scope	Endocrinology Endocrinology, Diabetes and Metabolism