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

Blobel G. 2008. Obituary: George Emil Palade (1912-2008). Nature 456:52.

A journal article with 2 authors

Krueger AB, Stone AA. 2014. Psychology and economics. Progress in measuring subjective well-being. Science 346:42–43.

A journal article with 3 authors

González E, Arbiol J, Puntes VF. 2011. Carving at the nanoscale: sequential galvanic exchange and Kirkendall growth at room temperature. Science 334:1377–1380.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Houghton AM, Hartzell WO, Robbins CS, Gomis-Rüth FX, Shapiro SD. 2009. Macrophage elastase kills bacteria within murine macrophages. Nature 460:637–641.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Cooney N. 2015. How to Be Great at Doing Good. John Wiley & Sons, Inc, Hoboken, NJ.

An edited book

2010. Recent Advances in the Message Passing Interface: 17th European MPI Users’ Group Meeting, EuroMPI 2010, Stuttgart, Germany, September 12-15, 2010. Proceedings. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg.

A chapter in an edited book

Li J, Du J, He K, Gou X. 2012. Cell-Death Control by Receptor Kinases in Arabidopsis thaliana, p. 79–91. In Tax, F, Kemmerling, B (eds.), Receptor-like Kinases in Plants: From Development to Defense. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg.

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

Fang J. 2014. Watch This Parasitic Fungus Erupt From An Ant’s Head. IFLScience. IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/watch-parasitic-fungus-erupt-ants-head/. 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. 1999. Year 2000 Computing Crisis: Readiness of the Oil and Gas Industries. AIMD-99-162. 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

Roberts DM. 2017. Resilience in Physically Maltreated Adolescents: Interpersonally Related Protective Factors and Gender Differences. 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

Leland J. 2017. Comrades of the Sky. 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