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

Owens, B. (2015) Batteries. Nature 526: S89.

A journal article with 2 authors

Abbott, A., and Schiermeier, Q. (2000) Deep roots of Nazi science revealed. Nature 407: 823–824.

A journal article with 3 authors

Wilson, R.I., Turner, G.C., and Laurent, G. (2004) Transformation of olfactory representations in the Drosophila antennal lobe. Science 303: 366–370.

A journal article with 8 or more authors

Pelling, A.E., Sehati, S., Gralla, E.B., Valentine, J.S., and Gimzewski, J.K. (2004) Local nanomechanical motion of the cell wall of Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Science 305: 1147–1150.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Burghardt, G., and Walls, B. (2011) Managed Futures for Institutional Investors. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ.

An edited book

Hunt, K.K., Robb, G.L., Strom, E.A., and Ueno, N.T. (eds) (2008) Breast Cancer 2nd edition. Springer, New York, NY.

A chapter in an edited book

Sarkar, M., and Theuwissen, A. (2013) Material Classification Using CMOS Polarization Sensor. In A Biologically Inspired CMOS Image Sensor. Theuwissen, A. (ed.). Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. pp. 157–184.

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, D. (2015) Beachgoers Stumble Across Beached Great White Shark. IFLScience https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/beachgoers-attempt-save-beached-great-white/. 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 (1995) FAA Budget: Issues Related to the Fiscal Year 1996 Request. 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

Ahmed, S. (2013) Human fatigue in prolonged mentally demanding work-tasks: An observational study in the field. .

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

Semple, K., and Chen, D.W. (2015) In Skelos Case, a Son Whose Life Seemed to Lose Traction Early. New York Times A1.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Owens, 2015).
This sentence cites two references (Abbott and Schiermeier, 2000; Owens, 2015).

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

Two authors: (Abbott and Schiermeier, 2000)
Three or more authors: (Pelling et al., 2004)

About the journal

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

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