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

Verma I (2005) Then and now. Nature 436:478–479

A journal article with 2 authors

Downer M, Zgadzaj R (2014) Accelerator physics: Surf’s up at SLAC. Nature 515:40–41

A journal article with 3 authors

Russell DG, Barry CE 3rd, Flynn JL (2010) Tuberculosis: what we don’t know can, and does, hurt us. Science 328:852–856

A journal article with 5 or more authors

Drews B, Roellig K, Menzies BR, et al (2013) Ultrasonography of wallaby prenatal development shows that the climb to the pouch begins in utero. Sci Rep 3:1458

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Anderson RJ, Groundwater PW, Todd A, Worsley AJ (2012) Antibacterial Agents. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, Chichester, UK

An edited book

Yan X-T, Jiang C, Eynard B (2008) Advanced Design and Manufacture to Gain a Competitive Edge: New Manufacturing Techniques and their Role in Improving Enterprise Performance. Springer, London

A chapter in an edited book

Fan N, Mujahid S, Zhang J, et al (2013) Nurse Scheduling Problem: An Integer Programming Model with a Practical Application. In: Pardalos PM, Georgiev PG, Papajorgji P, Neugaard B (eds) Systems Analysis Tools for Better Health Care Delivery. Springer, New York, NY, pp 65–98

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

Davis J (2016) Ancient Alaskan Dolphin May Hold Clues To Evolution Of Bizarre South Asian River Dolphin. In: IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/ancient-alaskan-dolphin-may-hold-clues-to-evolution-of-bizarre-south-asian-river-dolphin/. 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 (2003) Information Technology Training: Practices of Leading Private-Sector Companies. 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

Zeedick DM (2010) The modified delphi method to analyze the application of instructional design theory to online graduate education. Doctoral dissertation, George Washington 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

Harris G (2012) India’s Olympic Committee Is Suspended by the I.O.C. New York Times B16

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

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