How to format your references using the Research in Microbiology citation style

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

[1]

Marín O. Journal club. A developmental neurobiologist looks at how damage induces cell birth in the adult brain. Nature 2010;465:401.

A journal article with 2 authors

[1]

Liu X, Duncan JH. The effects of surfactants on spilling breaking waves. Nature 2003;421:520–3.

A journal article with 3 authors

[1]

Park HH, Woo K, Ahn J-P. Core-shell bimetallic nanoparticles robustly fixed on the outermost surface of magnetic silica microspheres. Sci Rep 2013;3:1497.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

[1]

Beck B, Driessens G, Goossens S, Youssef KK, Kuchnio A, Caauwe A, et al. A vascular niche and a VEGF-Nrp1 loop regulate the initiation and stemness of skin tumours. Nature 2011;478:399–403.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

[1]

Britton M. YouthNation. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc; 2015.

An edited book

[1]

Lackey S, Shumaker R, editors. Virtual, Augmented and Mixed Reality: 8th International Conference, VAMR 2016, Held as Part of HCI International 2016, Toronto, Canada, July 17-22, 2016. Proceedings. vol. 9740. Cham: Springer International Publishing; 2016.

A chapter in an edited book

[1]

Coates AJ, Wahlund J-E, Ågren K, Edberg N, Cui J, Wellbrock A, et al. Recent Results from Titan’s Ionosphere. In: Szego K, editor. The Plasma Environment of Venus, Mars, and Titan, New York, NY: Springer US; 2012, p. 85–111.

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 Research in Microbiology.

Blog post

[1]

Carpineti A. Large New Analysis On Penis Size “Reveals” Something Completely Obvious. IFLScience 2016. https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/to-no-ones-surprise-it-looks-like-men-lie-about-the-size-of-their-penis/ (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

[1]

Government Accountability Office. Federal Communications Commission: Narrowband Personal Communications Services and Competitive Bidding. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 2000.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

[1]

Kamis RP. The Relationship between Expanded Concepts of Self and Well-Being. Doctoral dissertation. Northcentral University, 2013.

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

[1]

Vecsey G. Project Turns to Architect It Knows Well. New York Times 2016:B8.

In-text citations

References should be cited in the text by sequential numbers in square brackets:

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	Research in Microbiology
Abbreviation	Res. Microbiol.
ISSN (print)	0923-2508
Scope	Molecular Biology Microbiology General Medicine