How to format your references using the Metabolism Open citation style

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

[1]

Smaglik P. To plan...or not to plan? Nature 2005;435:381.

A journal article with 2 authors

[1]

Belkhadir Y, Chory J. Brassinosteroid signaling: a paradigm for steroid hormone signaling from the cell surface. Science 2006;314:1410–1.

A journal article with 3 authors

[1]

Zimmer J, Nam Y, Rapoport TA. Structure of a complex of the ATPase SecA and the protein-translocation channel. Nature 2008;455:936–43.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

[1]

Pagola S, Stephens PW, Bohle DS, Kosar AD, Madsen SK. The structure of malaria pigment beta-haematin. Nature 2000;404:307–10.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

[1]

Ugeux G. International Finance Regulation. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.; 2014.

An edited book

[1]

Satapathy SC, Avadhani PS, Udgata SK, Lakshminarayana S, editors. ICT and Critical Infrastructure: Proceedings of the 48th Annual Convention of Computer Society of India- Vol I: Hosted by CSI Vishakapatnam Chapter. vol. 248. Cham: Springer International Publishing; 2014.

A chapter in an edited book

[1]

Moos L, Krejsler J, Laursen PF. Denmark. In: Scheerens J, editor. Informal Learning of Active Citizenship at School: An International Comparative Study in Seven European Countries, Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands; 2009, p. 75–103.

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 Open.

Blog post

[1]

Andrew D. Awesome X-Ray Images Show A Python Breaking Down An Alligator. IFLScience 2015. https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/python-digesting-alligator/ (accessed October 30, 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

[1]

Government Accountability Office. Proposed Closure of VOA Dixon Relay Station. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 1979.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

[1]

Samel C. Imagination and negotiation: Motivations for Cambodian women to marry Cambodian American men. Doctoral dissertation. California State University, Long Beach, 2014.

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]

Seligman MEP, Tierney J. We Aren’t Built to Live in the Moment. New York Times 2017:SR1.

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 Open
ISSN (print)	2589-9368
Scope