How to format your references using the Microbial Biotechnology citation style

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

PaperpileThe citation style is built in and you can choose it in Settings > Citation Style or Paperpile > Citation Style in Google Docs.
EndNoteDownload the output style file
Mendeley, Zotero, Papers, and othersThe style is either built in or you can download a CSL file that is supported by most references management programs.
BibTeXBibTeX 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
Moore, P. (2005) PCR: replicating success. Nature 435: 235–238.
A journal article with 2 authors
Stolow, A. and Jonas, D.M. (2004) Chemistry. Multidimensional snapshots of chemical dynamics. Science 305: 1575–1577.
A journal article with 3 authors
Pendry, J.B., Martín-Moreno, L., and Garcia-Vidal, F.J. (2004) Mimicking surface plasmons with structured surfaces. Science 305: 847–848.
A journal article with 8 or more authors
Takamoto, D.Y., Aydil, E., Zasadzinski, J.A., Ivanova, A.T., Schwartz, D.K., Yang, T., and Cremer, P.S. (2001) Stable ordering in Langmuir-Blodgett films. Science 293: 1292–1295.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book
Vicat-Blanc, P., Soudan, S., Guillier, R., and Goglin, B. (2013) Computing Networks, Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
An edited book
Madaan, A., Kikuchi, S., and Bhalla, S. eds. (2013) Databases in Networked Information Systems: 8th International Workshop, DNIS 2013, Aizu-Wakamatsu, Japan, March 25-27, 2013. Proceedings, Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer.
A chapter in an edited book
Tsioufis, C.P. (2015) Echocardiographic Assessment of the Aorta and Coronary Arteries in Hypertensive Patients. In Assessment of Preclinical Organ Damage in Hypertension. Agabiti Rosei, E. and Mancia, G. (eds). Cham: Springer International Publishing, pp. 51–62.

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 Microbial Biotechnology.

Blog post
Andrew, E. (2015) LightSail’s Solar Sail Has Been Deployed. IFLScience.

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 (1998) Balancing Flexibility and Accountability: Grant Program Design in Education and Other Areas, Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation
Gullett, D.L. (2017) Lived Experience of Suffering through the 2010 Earthquake in Haiti.

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. (2016) Long-Lost Flag, Mystery of 9/11, Heads to Museum in Manhattan. New York Times A19.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Moore, 2005).
This sentence cites two references (Stolow and Jonas, 2004; Moore, 2005).

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

  • Two authors: (Stolow and Jonas, 2004)
  • Three or more authors: (Takamoto et al., 2001)

About the journal

Full journal titleMicrobial Biotechnology
AbbreviationMicrob. Biotechnol.
ISSN (online)1751-7915
ScopeBiochemistry
Biotechnology
Bioengineering
Applied Microbiology and Biotechnology

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