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:

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

Schmittner, A. (2005) Decline of the marine ecosystem caused by a reduction in the Atlantic overturning circulation. Nature 434: 628–633.

A journal article with 2 authors

Hughes, R. and Nordholt, J. (2011) Physics. Refining quantum cryptography. Science 333: 1584–1586.

A journal article with 3 authors

Wagner, P.J., Kosnik, M.A., and Lidgard, S. (2006) Abundance distributions imply elevated complexity of post-Paleozoic marine ecosystems. Science 314: 1289–1292.

A journal article with 8 or more authors

Slanger, T.G., Cosby, P.C., Huestis, D.L., and Bida, T.A. (2001) Discovery of the atomic oxygen green line in the Venus night airglow. Science 291: 463–465.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Cayoun, B.A. (2015) Mindfulness-integrated CBT for Well-being and Personal Growth, Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

An edited book

Kole, C. ed. (2011) Wild Crop Relatives: Genomic and Breeding Resources: Legume Crops and Forages, Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer.

A chapter in an edited book

Brimblecombe, P. (2011) Environment and Architectural Stone. In Stone in Architecture: Properties, Durability. Siegesmund, S. and Snethlage, R. (eds). Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer, pp. 317–346.

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) Safety Of Contaminated Vitamins And Nutritional Supplements Can’t Be Left To Consumers. 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 (1995) Chicago Circulator, 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

Morales, G.A. (2015) Effects of communication and control latency on air traffic controller acceptance of unmanned aircraft operations.

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

Cowen, T. (2015) In an Uber World, Fortune Favors the Freelancer. New York Times BU6.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Schmittner, 2005).
This sentence cites two references (Schmittner, 2005; Hughes and Nordholt, 2011).

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

Two authors: (Hughes and Nordholt, 2011)
Three or more authors: (Slanger et al., 2001)

About the journal

Full journal title	Microbial Biotechnology
Abbreviation	Microb. Biotechnol.
ISSN (online)	1751-7915
Scope	Biochemistry Biotechnology Bioengineering Applied Microbiology and Biotechnology