How to format your references using the Microbiology and Molecular Biology Reviews citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Microbiology and Molecular Biology Reviews (MMBR). 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

Levine AG. 2008. Science careers. Finance’s quant(um) mechanics. Science 322:1264–1265.

A journal article with 2 authors

Conner SD, Schmid SL. 2003. Regulated portals of entry into the cell. Nature 422:37–44.

A journal article with 3 authors

Alimardani M, Nishio S, Ishiguro H. 2013. Humanlike robot hands controlled by brain activity arouse illusion of ownership in operators. Sci Rep 3:2396.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Chiang K-C, Tsui K-H, Chung L-C, Yeh C-N, Feng T-H, Chen W-T, Chang P-L, Chiang H-Y, Juang H-H. 2014. Cisplatin modulates B-cell translocation gene 2 to attenuate cell proliferation of prostate carcinoma cells in both p53-dependent and p53-independent pathways. Sci Rep 4:5511.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Focardi SM, Fabozzi FJ, Bali TG. 2013. Mathematical Methods for Finance. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ.

An edited book

2012. The Theory of Evolution and Its Impact. Springer, Milano.

A chapter in an edited book

Du D, Jiang B, Shi P. 2015. Sensor Fault Estimation and Accommodation for Discrete-Time Switched Systems, p. 47–60. In Jiang, B, Shi, P (eds.), Fault Tolerant Control for Switched Linear Systems. Springer International Publishing, Cham.

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 Microbiology and Molecular Biology Reviews.

Blog post

Hale T. 2015. Why Was A Child’s “5+5+5=15” Answer Marked As Incorrect? IFLScience. IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/editors-blog/teacher-marks-child-s-55515-answer-incorrect/. Retrieved 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. 1993. Space Station: Program Instability and Cost Growth Continue Pending Redesign. NSIAD-93-187. 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

Brown JT. 2010. Evaluation of a social science simulation by uncertainty analysis and comparison. Doctoral dissertation. George Washington University, Washington, DC.

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

Mueller B, Baker AL. 2016. In the South Bronx, a Police Precinct Where Murder Persists. New York Times.

In-text citations

References should be cited in the text by sequential numbers in parentheses:

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	Microbiology and Molecular Biology Reviews
Abbreviation	Microbiol. Mol. Biol. Rev.
ISSN (print)	1092-2172
ISSN (online)	1098-5557
Scope	Molecular Biology General Immunology and Microbiology