How to format your references using the mSystems citation style

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

Eagleman DM. 2005. Comment on “The involvement of the orbitofrontal cortex in the experience of regret.” Science 308:1260; author reply 1260.

A journal article with 2 authors

Grande C, Patel NH. 2009. Nodal signalling is involved in left-right asymmetry in snails. Nature 457:1007–1011.

A journal article with 3 authors

Ravishankara AR, Daniel JS, Portmann RW. 2009. Nitrous oxide (N2O): the dominant ozone-depleting substance emitted in the 21st century. Science 326:123–125.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Nowoshilow S, Schloissnig S, Fei J-F, Dahl A, Pang AWC, Pippel M, Winkler S, Hastie AR, Young G, Roscito JG, Falcon F, Knapp D, Powell S, Cruz A, Cao H, Habermann B, Hiller M, Tanaka EM, Myers EW. 2018. The axolotl genome and the evolution of key tissue formation regulators. Nature 554:50–55.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Makishima A. 2016. Thermal Ionization Mass Spectrometry (TIMS). Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim, Germany.

An edited book

2015. Modern Manufacturing Engineering. Springer International Publishing, Cham.

A chapter in an edited book

Neumann K-H, Imani J, Kumar A. 2009. Protoplast Cultures, p. 51–60. In Kumar, A, Neumann, K-H (eds.), Plant Cell and Tissue Culture - A Tool in Biotechnology: Basics and Application. 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 mSystems.

Blog post

Andrew E. 2013. Mutations In mtDNA May Not Be as Rare or Random as Previously Believed. IFLScience. IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/mutations-mtdna-may-not-be-rare-or-random-previously-believed/. 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. Untangling the Stafford Student Loan Program. 147034. 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

Pryor GL. 2013. Effects of a balance-specific exercise program on blood pressure medication usage. Doctoral dissertation. California State University, Long Beach, Long Beach, CA.

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

Kelly DA. 2005. Keeping Your Computer and Its Contents Safe. 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	mSystems
Abbreviation	mSystems
ISSN (online)	2379-5077
Scope