How to format your references using the Microbiology citation style

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

Cruz M. Black holes. Inescapable pull. Introduction. Science 2012;337:535.

A journal article with 2 authors

Shafiq G, Veluvolu KC. Surface chest motion decomposition for cardiovascular monitoring. Sci Rep 2014;4:5093.

A journal article with 3 authors

Lin J, Balabin IA, Beratan DN. The nature of aqueous tunneling pathways between electron-transfer proteins. Science 2005;310:1311–1313.

A journal article with 6 or more authors

Burnett DL, Langley DB, Schofield P, Hermes JR, Chan TD, et al. Germinal center antibody mutation trajectories are determined by rapid self/foreign discrimination. Science 2018;360:223–226.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Wilson GP. Managing to the New Regulatory Reality. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.; 2011.

An edited book

Joyner D. Selected Unsolved Problems in Coding Theory. 1st ed. Boston, MA: Birkhäuser; 2011.

A chapter in an edited book

Nelson A. XML Conversion of the Windows Registry for Forensic Processing and Distribution. In: Peterson G, Shenoi S (editors). Advances in Digital Forensics VIII: 8th IFIP WG 11.9 International Conference on Digital Forensics, Pretoria, South Africa, January 3-5, 2012, Revised Selected Papers. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer; 2012. pp. 51–65.

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.

Blog post

Carpineti A. Samples From Apollo 14 Suggest The Moon Is Almost As Old As The Solar System. IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/space/samples-from-apollo-14-suggest-the-moon-is-almost-as-old-as-the-solar-system/ (2017, 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. Financial Reporting: NASA Can Improve Compliance With GAO Standards and Treasury Requirements. AFMD-88-21; Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 29 February 1988.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Felarca CU. A burning problem: Skin protection practices among college nursing students and non-nursing college students. Doctoral Dissertation; California State University, Long Beach; 2012.

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

Chira S. Women Interrupted. New York Times, 15 June 2017, p. B1.

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	Microbiology
Abbreviation	Microbiology
ISSN (print)	1350-0872
ISSN (online)	1465-2080
Scope	Microbiology

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