How to format your references using the Microbiological Research citation style

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

Cepko, C., 2010. Neuroscience. Seeing the light of day. Science 329, 403–404.

A journal article with 2 authors

Rowley, J.D., Blumenthal, T., 2008. Medicine. The cart before the horse. Science 321, 1302–1304.

A journal article with 3 authors

Downs, J.A., Nussenzweig, M.C., Nussenzweig, A., 2007. Chromatin dynamics and the preservation of genetic information. Nature 447, 951–958.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Smith, J.B., Lamanna, M.C., Lacovara, K.J., Dodson, P., Smith, J.R., Poole, J.C., Giegengack, R., Attia, Y., 2001. A giant sauropod dinosaur from an Upper Cretaceous mangrove deposit in Egypt. Science 292, 1704–1706.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Holmes, J.D., 2016. Great Myths of Education and Learning. John Wiley & Sons, Inc, Hoboken, NJ.

An edited book

Ramkumar, M. (Ed.), 2013. On a Sustainable Future of the Earth’s Natural Resources, Springer Earth System Sciences. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg.

A chapter in an edited book

Lane, T., 2014. When Actions Feel Alien—an Explanatory Model, in: Hung, T.-W. (Ed.), Communicative Action: Selected Papers of the 2013 IEAS Conference on Language and Action. Springer, Singapore, pp. 53–74.

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 Microbiological Research.

Blog post

Andrews, R., 2015. Astonishingly Well-Preserved Dinosaur Found With Fossilized Tail Feathers And Skin Tissue [WWW Document]. IFLScience. URL https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/bird-mimic-dinosaur-found-preserved-tail-feathers-and-skin-tissue/ (accessed 10.30.18).

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, 1976. Experimental Schools Program: Opportunities To Improve the Management of an Educational Research Program (No. MWD-76-64). 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

Rouhani, M., 2013. Overdose prevention and naloxone distribution: A grant project (Doctoral dissertation). California State University, Long Beach, Long Beach, CA.

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

Greenhouse, L., 2006. Justices Curb Postal Service’s Immunity From Lawsuits. New York Times A21.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Cepko, 2010).
This sentence cites two references (Cepko, 2010; Rowley and Blumenthal, 2008).

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

Two authors: (Rowley and Blumenthal, 2008)
Three or more authors: (Smith et al., 2001)

About the journal

Full journal title	Microbiological Research
Abbreviation	Microbiol. Res.
ISSN (print)	0944-5013
Scope	Microbiology