How to format your references using the Molecular Microbiology citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Molecular Microbiology. 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	Download the output style file
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

Smaglik, P. (2004) Alternative paths. Nature 430: 485.

A journal article with 2 authors

West, S.A., and Peters, A.D. (2000) Paying for sex is not easy. Nature 407: 962.

A journal article with 3 authors

Rust, M.J., Golden, S.S., and O’Shea, E.K. (2011) Light-driven changes in energy metabolism directly entrain the cyanobacterial circadian oscillator. Science 331: 220–223.

A journal article with 8 or more authors

Bouskra, D., Brézillon, C., Bérard, M., Werts, C., Varona, R., Boneca, I.G., and Eberl, G. (2008) Lymphoid tissue genesis induced by commensals through NOD1 regulates intestinal homeostasis. Nature 456: 507–510.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Maguire, L., and Smith, E. (2012) 30 Great Myths about Shakespeare. Blackwell Publishing Ltd., Oxford, UK.

An edited book

Park, J.J., Jin, H., Liao, X., and Zheng, R. (eds) (2011) Proceedings of the International Conference on Human-centric Computing 2011 and Embedded and Multimedia Computing 2011: HumanCom & EMC 2011. Springer Netherlands, Dordrecht.

A chapter in an edited book

Boller, T. (2012) Experimental Evidence of a Role for RLKs in Innate Immunity. In Receptor-like Kinases in Plants: From Development to Defense. Tax, F., and Kemmerling, B. (eds). Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. pp. 67–77.

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 Molecular Microbiology.

Blog post

Andrew, E. (2014) Promising New Cancer Vaccine Developed. IFLScience https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/promising-new-cancer-vaccine-developed/. Accessed October 30, 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 (1987) FAA Air Traffic Controller Staffing and Related Issues. 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

Bartenhagen, J. (2012) Transitioning organizations for sustainability: Exploring the intersection of sustainability, worldview, and organization development. .

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

Creswell, J., and MERCED, M.J. de la (2017) Activist Investor Seeks Seat at Procter & Gamble. New York Times B1.

In-text citations

References should be cited in the text by name and year in parentheses:

This sentence cites one reference (Smaglik, 2004).
This sentence cites two references (West and Peters, 2000; Smaglik, 2004).

Here are examples of in-text citations with multiple authors:

Two authors: (West and Peters, 2000)
Three or more authors: (Bouskra et al., 2008)

About the journal

Full journal title	Molecular Microbiology
Abbreviation	Mol. Microbiol.
ISSN (print)	0950-382X
ISSN (online)	1365-2958
Scope	Molecular Biology Microbiology