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

Bayry J. Journal club. An immunologist applauds a protein that prunes intolerant white blood cells. Nature 2008;456:285.

A journal article with 2 authors

Webb DJ, Suginohara N. Oceanography. Vertical mixing in the ocean. Nature 2001;409:37.

A journal article with 3 authors

Tanabe K, Sakihama N, Kaneko A. Stable SNPs in malaria antigen genes in isolated populations. Science 2004;303:493.

A journal article with 6 or more authors

Yang S, Dong J, Yao Z, Shen C, Shi X, et al. One-pot synthesis of graphene-supported monodisperse Pd nanoparticles as catalyst for formic acid electro-oxidation. Sci Rep 2014;4:4501.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Morris GL. Investing with the Trend. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.; 2014.

An edited book

Tan T, Ruan Q, Wang S, Ma H, Di K (eds). Advances in Image and Graphics Technologies: 10th Chinese Conference, IGTA 2015, Beijing, China, June 19-20, 2015, Proceedings. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer; 2015.

A chapter in an edited book

Sengupta B, Das A. SIMD-Based Implementations of Sieving in Integer-Factoring Algorithms. In: Gierlichs B, Guilley S, Mukhopadhyay D (editors). Security, Privacy, and Applied Cryptography Engineering: Third International Conference, SPACE 2013, Kharagpur, India, October 19-23, 2013. Proceedings. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer; 2013. pp. 40–55.

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

Hale T. World’s First Head Transplant Will Use Virtual Reality To Prepare Patients. IFLScience.

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. Student Loans: Default Rates at Historically Black Colleges and Universities. HEHS-97-33; Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 21 January 1997.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Kim G. Development of a nutrition-based curriculum for farm-to-school programs for the fourth and fifth grades. Doctoral Dissertation; California State University, Long Beach; 2013.

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

Corkery M, Walsh MW. Governor of Puerto Rico Warns of Looming Default Without Bankruptcy Plan. New York Times, 17 December 2015, p. B6.

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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