How to format your references using the Microbial Genomics citation style

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

Epstein SS. Microbial awakenings. Nature 2009;457:1083.

A journal article with 2 authors

Thisse C, Zon LI. Organogenesis--heart and blood formation from the zebrafish point of view. Science 2002;295:457–462.

A journal article with 3 authors

Urban FE, Cole JE, Overpeck JT. Influence of mean climate change on climate variability from a 155-year tropical Pacific coral record. Nature 2000;407:989–993.

A journal article with 6 or more authors

Marley R, Giachello CNG, Scrutton NS, Baines RA, Jones AR. Cryptochrome-dependent magnetic field effect on seizure response in Drosophila larvae. Sci Rep 2014;4:5799.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Wells R. Global Credit Management. Oxford, UK: John Wiley & Sons Ltd; 2004.

An edited book

Saligrama V (ed). Networked Sensing Information and Control. Boston, MA: Springer US; 2008.

A chapter in an edited book

Sgurev V. Logical Operations and Inference in the Complex s-Logic. In: Sgurev V, Yager RR, Kacprzyk J, Jotsov V (editors). Innovative Issues in Intelligent Systems. Cham: Springer International Publishing; 2016. pp. 141–160.

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 Genomics.

Blog post

Taub B. Gorilla Gang Violence Is On The Rise In The Wild. IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/gorilla-gang-violence-rise-wild/ (2016, accessed 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. Airline Ticketing: Impact of Changes in the Airline Ticket Distribution Industry. GAO-03-749; Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 31 July 2003.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Griner KF. The Effectiveness of the Integrative Career Counseling Model. Doctoral Dissertation; George Washington University; 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

Williams J. An Actor’s ‘Always-Changing’ Bond With Faith. New York Times, 16 April 2017, p. C4.

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 Genomics
Abbreviation	Microb. Genom.
ISSN (online)	2057-5858
Scope