How to format your references using the Microbial Ecology citation style

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

Dominissini D (2014) Genomics and Proteomics. Roadmap to the epitranscriptome. Science 346:1192

A journal article with 2 authors

Heinz J, Idsardi W (2011) Psychology. Sentence and word complexity. Science 333:295–297

A journal article with 3 authors

Levine B, Mizushima N, Virgin HW (2011) Autophagy in immunity and inflammation. Nature 469:323–335

A journal article with 5 or more authors

Gougoux F, Lepore F, Lassonde M, et al (2004) Neuropsychology: pitch discrimination in the early blind. Nature 430:309

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Chaskalson M (2011) The Mindful Workplace. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, Chichester, UK

An edited book

Leuschel M, Wehrheim H (2009) Integrated Formal Methods: 7th International Conference, IFM 2009, Düsseldorf, Germany, February 16-19, 2009. Proceedings. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

A chapter in an edited book

Philpott A, Dallagi A, Gallet E (2013) On Cutting Plane Algorithms and Dynamic Programming for Hydroelectricity Generation. In: Kovacevic RM, Pflug GC, Vespucci MT (eds) Handbook of Risk Management in Energy Production and Trading. Springer US, Boston, MA, pp 105–127

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 Ecology.

Blog post

Luntz S (2017) Male Birds Like Neighbors With Similar Personality. In: IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/male-birds-like-neighbors-with-similar-personality/. Accessed 30 Oct 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 (1974) Administration of the Medicaid Drug Program. U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Canetta SE (2010) Type III Neuregulin1 Signaling in Peripheral Sensory Neurons Affects Thermal Pain Sensation and Hyperalgesia. Doctoral dissertation, Columbia University

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

Pilon M (2013) A Series of Poses for Fitness, Inside and Out. New York Times A11

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	Microbial Ecology
Abbreviation	Microb. Ecol.
ISSN (print)	0095-3628
ISSN (online)	1432-184X
Scope	Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics Soil Science Ecology

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