How to format your references using the Metabolites citation style

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

Ricci-Tersenghi, F. Mathematics. Being Glassy without Being Hard to Solve. Science 2010, 330, 1639–1640.

A journal article with 2 authors

Keith, D.W.; Farrell, A.E. Environmental Science. Rethinking Hydrogen Cars. Science 2003, 301, 315–316.

A journal article with 3 authors

Winkler, W.; Nahvi, A.; Breaker, R.R. Thiamine Derivatives Bind Messenger RNAs Directly to Regulate Bacterial Gene Expression. Nature 2002, 419, 952–956.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Eun, J.K.; Guthrie, K.A.; Zirpoli, G.; Gadi, V.K. In Situ Breast Cancer and Microchimerism. Sci. Rep. 2013, 3, 2192.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Sailor, W. Making RTI Work; Jossey-Bass: San Francisco, CA, USA, 2009; ISBN 9781118269480.

An edited book

The Role of Microtubules in Cell Biology, Neurobiology, and Oncology; Fojo, T., Ed.; Cancer Drug Discovery and Development; Humana Press: Totowa, NJ, 2008; ISBN 9781588292940.

A chapter in an edited book

Yan, X.; Jeschke, S.; Dubey, A.; Wilke, M.; Schütze, H. RENS – Enabling a Robot to Identify a Person. In Intelligent Robotics and Applications: Second International Conference, ICIRA 2009, Singapore, December 16-18, 2009. Proceedings; Xie, M., Xiong, Y., Xiong, C., Liu, H., Hu, Z., Eds.; Lecture Notes in Computer Science; Springer: Berlin, Heidelberg, 2009; pp. 43–54 ISBN 9783642108167.

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 Metabolites.

Blog post

Andrew, E. Genetically Modified Moths Could Save Crops Available online: https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/genetically-modified-moths-tested-save-crops/ (accessed on 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 Air Traffic Control: Characteristics and Performance of Selected International Air Navigation Service Providers and Lessons Learned from Their Commercialization; U.S. Government Printing Office: Washington, DC, 2005;

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Croghan, A. The Effects of Depressive Symptomatology, Intrusive Thinking, and Age on Cognitive Functioning. Doctoral dissertation, Southern Illinois University: Edwardsville, IL, 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

Gustines, G.G. Savoring The Live Action. New York Times 2010, ST9.

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	Metabolites
Abbreviation	Metabolites
ISSN (online)	2218-1989
Scope	Biochemistry Molecular Biology Endocrinology, Diabetes and Metabolism