How to format your references using the Nature Reviews Microbiology citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Nature Reviews 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	Find the style here: output styles overview
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

Savage, N. Algae: The scum solution. Nature 474, S15-6 (2011).

A journal article with 2 authors

Heldwein, E. E. & Brennan, R. G. Crystal structure of the transcription activator BmrR bound to DNA and a drug. Nature 409, 378–382 (2001).

A journal article with 3 authors

Blair, A. C., Fisher, E. R. & Rickey, D. IBI* series winner. Discovering nanoscience. Science 337, 1056–1057 (2012).

A journal article with 6 or more authors

Tanaka, M., Chien, P., Naber, N., Cooke, R. & Weissman, J. S. Conformational variations in an infectious protein determine prion strain differences. Nature 428, 323–328 (2004).

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Lakshminarayana, B. Fluid Dynamics and Heat Transfer of Turbomachinery. (John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ, 2007).

An edited book

Developing Community Schools, Community Learning Centers, Extended-Service Schools and Multi-Service Schools: International Exemplars for Practice, Policy and Research. (Springer International Publishing, Cham, 2016).

A chapter in an edited book

Bu, H., Kim, J. & Kim, S. The Digital Video Frame Obfuscation Method in Consideration of Human Visual System for Intellectual Property Protection and Authentication. in Frontier and Innovation in Future Computing and Communications (eds. Park, J. J. (jong H., Zomaya, A., Jeong, H.-Y. & Obaidat, M.) 37–42 (Springer Netherlands, Dordrecht, 2014).

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 Nature Reviews Microbiology.

Blog post

Andrew, E. How To Memorise An Entire Foreign Dictionary (And Become A Scrabble World Champion). IFLScience https://www.iflscience.com/brain/how-memorise-entire-foreign-dictionary-and-become-scrabble-world-champion/ (2015).

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. Environmental Protection: Bibliography of GAO Documents, August 1988-April 1990. (1990).

Theses and dissertations

Theses including Ph.D. dissertations, Master's theses or Bachelor theses follow the basic format outlined below.

Doctoral dissertation

Mueller, K. Biases in the Selection Process Against Applicants with Tattoos. (Southern Illinois University, Edwardsville, IL, 2017).

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

Kishkovsky, S. A Treasure Is Restored, With Culture Its Bounty. New York Times A21 (2008).

In-text citations

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

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	Nature Reviews Microbiology
Abbreviation	Nat. Rev. Microbiol.
ISSN (print)	1740-1526
ISSN (online)	1740-1534
Scope	General Immunology and Microbiology