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

Isselbacher, K.J. Retrospective. Paul C. Zamecnik (1912-2009). Science 2009, 326, 1359.

A journal article with 2 authors

Debenedetti, P.G.; Stillinger, F.H. Supercooled Liquids and the Glass Transition. Nature 2001, 410, 259–267.

A journal article with 3 authors

Erol, V.; Ozaydin, F.; Altintas, A.A. Analysis of Entanglement Measures and LOCC Maximized Quantum Fisher Information of General Two Qubit Systems. Sci. Rep. 2014, 4, 5422.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Simpson, S.W.; Quade, J.; Levin, N.E.; Butler, R.; Dupont-Nivet, G.; Everett, M.; Semaw, S. A Female Homo Erectus Pelvis from Gona, Ethiopia. Science 2008, 322, 1089–1092.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Vacca, J.R. Optical Networking Best Practices Handbook; John Wiley & Sons, Inc.: Hoboken, NJ, 2006; ISBN 9780470075067.

An edited book

Lederman, R. Psychosocial Adaptation to Pregnancy: Seven Dimensions of Maternal Role Development; Weis, K., Ed.; Springer: New York, NY, 2009; ISBN 9781441902870.

A chapter in an edited book

Moniuszko, A.; Patel, D. Practice Test #3: Difficulty Level – Hard. In Nuclear Medicine Technology Study Guide: A Technologist’s Review for Passing Board Exams; Patel, D., Ed.; Springer: New York, NY, 2011; pp. 159–240 ISBN 9781441993618.

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

O`Callaghan, J. Elon Musk’s Hyperloop Is Actually Sort Of Happening (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 Job Training Partnership Act: Information on Set-Aside Funding for Assistance to Older Workers; U.S. Government Printing Office: Washington, DC, 1990;

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Crosby, A.E. A Phenomenological Heuristic Study of Psychosocial Factors That Contribute to African American Females’ HIV Seroconversion. Doctoral dissertation, University of Phoenix: Phoenix, AZ, 2012.

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

STEVEN LEE MYERS; Sophia Kishkovsky contributed reporting for this article 2nd Russian Jury Convicts a Physicist Who Was Acquitted of Spy Charges. New York Times 2004, A10.

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