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

Mattick, J.S. (2011) Genome-sequencing anniversary. The genomic foundation is shifting. Science 331: 874.

A journal article with 2 authors

Leek, J.T., and Peng, R.D. (2015) Statistics: P values are just the tip of the iceberg. Nature 520: 612.

A journal article with 3 authors

Kaufman, T.C., Severson, D.W., and Robinson, G.E. (2002) The Anopheles genome and comparative insect genomics. Science 298: 97–98.

A journal article with 8 or more authors

Weinstock, I.A., Barbuzzi, E.M., Wemple, M.W., Cowan, J.J., Reiner, R.S., Sonnen, D.M., et al. (2001) Equilibrating metal-oxide cluster ensembles for oxidation reactions using oxygen in water. Nature 414: 191–195.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Edwards, J. (2004) Telecosmos. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ.

An edited book

Trussell, L.O., Popper, A.N., and Fay, R.R. (eds) (2012) Synaptic Mechanisms in the Auditory System. Springer, New York, NY.

A chapter in an edited book

Spirin, N., and Vorontsov, K. (2011) Learning to Rank with Nonlinear Monotonic Ensemble. In Multiple Classifier Systems: 10th International Workshop, MCS 2011, Naples, Italy, June 15-17, 2011. Proceedings. Sansone, C., Kittler, J., and Roli, F. (eds). Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. pp. 16–25.

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

Andrews, R. (2017) Elon Musk Wants To Fix South Australia’s Energy Crisis In Just 100 Days. IFLScience https://www.iflscience.com/technology/elon-musk-fix-south-australia-energy-crisis-100-days/. 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 (1989) Meeting the Aging Aircraft Challenge: Status and Opportunities. 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

Gonzalez, A.X. (2017) Échale Ganas: Engaging, Educating, and Empowering Latino Males at Four-Year Institutions. .

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

Hodgman, J. (2016) Bonus Advice From Judge John Hodgman. New York Times MM26.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Mattick, 2011).
This sentence cites two references (Mattick, 2011; Leek and Peng, 2015).

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

Two authors: (Leek and Peng, 2015)
Three or more authors: (Weinstock et al., 2001)

About the journal

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