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

Stringer, C. Palaeontology: The 100-Year Mystery of Piltdown Man. Nature 2012, 492, 177–179.

A journal article with 2 authors

Boyd, P.W.; Mackie, D. Comment on “The Southern Ocean Biological Response to Aeolian Iron Deposition.” Science 2008, 319, 159; author reply 159.

A journal article with 3 authors

Cram, D.S.; Song, B.; Trounson, A.O. Genotyping of Rhesus SCNT Pluripotent Stem Cell Lines. Nature 2007, 450, E12-4.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Berry, N.; Davis, C.; Jenkins, A.; Wood, D.; Minor, P.; Schild, G.; Bottiger, M.; Holmes, H.; Almond, N. Vaccine Safety. Analysis of Oral Polio Vaccine CHAT Stocks. Nature 2001, 410, 1046–1047.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Chernick, M.R. The Essentials of Biostatistics for Physicians, Nurses, and Clinicians; John Wiley & Sons, Inc.: Hoboken, NJ, 2011; ISBN 9781118071953.

An edited book

Advanced Technology in Teaching - Proceedings of the 2009 3rd International Conference on Teaching and Computational Science (WTCS 2009): Volume 1: Intelligent Ubiquitous Computing and Education; Wu, Y., Ed.; Advances in Intelligent and Soft Computing; Springer: Berlin, Heidelberg, 2012; Vol. 116; ISBN 9783642112751.

A chapter in an edited book

Sorgi, L.; Schlosser, M. Integrating Color Sampling into Depth Based Bilayer Segmentation. In Image Analysis and Processing – ICIAP 2013: 17th International Conference, Naples, Italy, September 9-13, 2013. Proceedings, Part I; Petrosino, A., Ed.; Lecture Notes in Computer Science; Springer: Berlin, Heidelberg, 2013; pp. 31–40 ISBN 9783642411809.

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. Italian Circus Paints Puppies And Calls Them Pandas (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 Pipeline Safety: Systematic Process Needed to Evaluate Outcomes of Research and Development Program; U.S. Government Printing Office: Washington, DC, 2003;

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Hitchins, M.G. Domain Disparity: Informing the Debate between Domain-General and Domain-Specific Information Processing in Working Memory. Doctoral dissertation, George Washington University: Washington, DC, 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

Mueller, B. Bicyclist Is Killed by Car Fleeing Court Police. New York Times 2015, A18.

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