How to format your references using the mSphere citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for mSphere. 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

Rust J. 2000. Fossil record of mass moth migration. Nature 405:530–531.

A journal article with 2 authors

Grant PR, Grant BR. 2006. Evolution of character displacement in Darwin’s finches. Science 313:224–226.

A journal article with 3 authors

Zhao W, Luo J, Jiao S. 2014. Comprehensive characterization of cancer subtype associated long non-coding RNAs and their clinical implications. Sci Rep 4:6591.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Pavesi L, Dal Negro L, Mazzoleni C, Franzò G, Priolo F. 2000. Optical gain in silicon nanocrystals. Nature 408:440–444.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Gustafsson F. 2001. Adaptive Filtering and Change Detection. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, Chichester, UK.

An edited book

2015. Tumor Cell Metabolism: Pathways, Regulation and Biology. Springer, Vienna.

A chapter in an edited book

Andronescu M, Brodie M. 2009. Decision Tree Learning Using a Bayesian Approach at Each Node, p. 4–15. In Gao, Y, Japkowicz, N (eds.), Advances in Artificial Intelligence: 22nd Canadian Conference on Artificial Intelligence, Canadian AI 2009 Kelowna, Canada, May 25-27, 2009 Proceedings. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg.

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 mSphere.

Blog post

Luntz S. 2014. Why Is This Giraffe Gnawing On An Impala Skull? IFLScience. IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/why-giraffe-gnawing-impala-skull/. Retrieved 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. 1992. Department of Education Grant Award. HRD-93-8R. 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

Lackey GM. 2015. The efficacy of using a natural soil additive for the establishment, survival and diversity of native prairie and spontaneously colonizing plant communities on unirrigated green roofs in a humid subtropical climate. Doctoral dissertation. Mississippi State University, Mississippi State, MS.

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

DAVID KELLY; David Kelly is an editor of The Book Review. 1990. “I CAN POP I CAN BREAK I CAN SLIDE AND JERK.” New York Times.

In-text citations

References should be cited in the text by sequential numbers in parentheses:

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	mSphere
Abbreviation	mSphere
ISSN (online)	2379-5042
Scope