How to format your references using the Microorganisms citation style

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

Montell, D.J. Morphogenetic Cell Movements: Diversity from Modular Mechanical Properties. Science 2008, 322, 1502–1505.

A journal article with 2 authors

Kepecs, A.; Fishell, G. Interneuron Cell Types Are Fit to Function. Nature 2014, 505, 318–326.

A journal article with 3 authors

Popovych, O.V.; Yanchuk, S.; Tass, P.A. Self-Organized Noise Resistance of Oscillatory Neural Networks with Spike Timing-Dependent Plasticity. Sci. Rep. 2013, 3, 2926.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Zickfeld, K.; Fyfe, J.C.; Eby, M.; Weaver, A.J. Comment on “Saturation of the Southern Ocean CO2 Sink Due to Recent Climate Change.” Science 2008, 319, 570; author reply 570.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Zhu, F.X.X.; Hoehn, R.; Thakkar, V.; Yuh, E. Hydroprocessing for Clean Energy; John Wiley & Sons, Inc.: Hoboken, New Jersey, 2017; ISBN 9781119328261.

An edited book

de Bruijn, H. Process Management: Why Project Management Fails in Complex Decision Making Processes; ten Heuvelhof, E., in ’t Veld, R., Eds.; Second Edition.; Springer: Berlin, Heidelberg, 2010; ISBN 9783642139406.

A chapter in an edited book

Cabot, J.; Clarisó, R.; Riera, D. Verifying UML/OCL Operation Contracts. In Integrated Formal Methods: 7th International Conference, IFM 2009, Düsseldorf, Germany, February 16-19, 2009. Proceedings; Leuschel, M., Wehrheim, H., Eds.; Lecture Notes in Computer Science; Springer: Berlin, Heidelberg, 2009; pp. 40–55 ISBN 9783642002540.

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 Microorganisms.

Blog post

Luntz, S. Climate Change Shortening Bees’ Tongues (accessed on 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 Transportation Security: Actions Needed to Address Limitations in TSA’s Transportation Worker Security Threat Assessments and Growing Workload; U.S. Government Printing Office: Washington, DC, 2011;

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Davis, L.V. Oxidation Effects on the Magnetic Properties of Iron Phthalocyanine Thin Films. Doctoral dissertation, California State University, Long Beach: Long Beach, CA, 2017.

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

Eligon, J. Family of Man Shot by Officer Settles Suit. New York Times 2017, A17.

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	Microorganisms
Abbreviation	Microorganisms
ISSN (online)	2076-2607
Scope