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

Maddox J (2003) Obituary: Edward Teller (1908-2003). Nature 425:362–363

A journal article with 2 authors

Benkovic SJ, Hammes-Schiffer S (2006) Biochemistry. Enzyme motions inside and out. Science 312:208–209

A journal article with 3 authors

Stern P, Hines PJ, Travis J (2014) The aging brain. Introduction. Science 346:566–567

A journal article with 5 or more authors

de Gouw JA, Middlebrook AM, Warneke C, et al (2011) Organic aerosol formation downwind from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. Science 331:1295–1299

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Mohanty S, Ghosh R (2010) Planning a Scientific Career in Industry. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ

An edited book

Iglesias M (2005) Foundations of Generic Optimization: Volume 1: A Combinatorial Approach to Epistasis. Springer Netherlands, Dordrecht

A chapter in an edited book

Ventura J (2016) Structure from Motion on a Sphere. In: Leibe B, Matas J, Sebe N, Welling M (eds) Computer Vision – ECCV 2016: 14th European Conference, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, October 11-14, 2016, Proceedings, Part III. Springer International Publishing, Cham, pp 53–68

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

Hamilton K (2017) Imaging Study Confirms Differences In ADHD Brains. In: IFLScience. 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 (2014) Aviation Manufacturing: Status of FAA’s Efforts to Improve Certification and Regulatory Consistency. 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

Moore C (2017) Seasonal Temperature Reconstruction for Northeastern Siberia during the Late Pleistocene from High-Resolution Oxygen Isotope Measurements Across Fossil Wood. Doctoral dissertation, University of Louisiana

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 C (2007) State Using Green Funds to Buy Parcel in Arrow Park. New York Times WE6

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