How to format your references using the Microchimica Acta citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Microchimica Acta. 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	Find the style here: output styles overview
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

Nisbet E (2001) Heavenly phenomena. Nature 410:635

A journal article with 2 authors

Wculek SK, Malanchi I (2015) Neutrophils support lung colonization of metastasis-initiating breast cancer cells. Nature 528:413–417

A journal article with 3 authors

Aitken CM, Jones DM, Larter SR (2004) Anaerobic hydrocarbon biodegradation in deep subsurface oil reservoirs. Nature 431:291–294

A journal article with 5 or more authors

Masai H, Yamada Y, Suzuki Y, et al (2013) Narrow energy gap between triplet and singlet excited states of Sn2+ in borate glass. Sci Rep 3:3541

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Grose M (2016) Construction Law in the United Arab Emirates and the Gulf. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, Chichester, UK

An edited book

Jia L, Liu Z, Qin Y, et al (2014) Proceedings of the 2013 International Conference on Electrical and Information Technologies for Rail Transportation (EITRT2013)-Volume I. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

A chapter in an edited book

Berndt JO, Herzog O (2012) Distributed Learning of Best Response Behaviors in Concurrent Iterated Many-Object Negotiations. In: Timm IJ, Guttmann C (eds) Multiagent System Technologies: 10th German Conference, MATES 2012, Trier, Germany, October 10-12, 2012. Proceedings. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, pp 15–29

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 Microchimica Acta.

Blog post

Evans K (2017) This GIF Shows What A Baby Can See Every Month For The First Year Of Its Life. In: IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/this-gif-shows-what-a-baby-can-see-every-month-for-the-first-year-of-its-life/. Accessed 30 Oct 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 (1994) Health, Education, Employment, and Income Security Reports. 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

Ma Y (2013) Vesicular Stomatitis Virus as a Vector to Deliver Virus-Like Particles of Human Norovirus: A New Live Vectored Vaccine for Human Norovirus. Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University

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

Kelly M (1992) THE TRANSITION: Political Memo; Clinton, After Raising Hopes, Tries to Lower Expectations. New York Times A1

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	Microchimica Acta
Abbreviation	Mikrochim. Acta
ISSN (print)	0026-3672
ISSN (online)	1436-5073
Scope	Analytical Chemistry