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]

Karsenty G. The complexities of skeletal biology. Nature 2003;423:316–8.

A journal article with 2 authors

[1]

Fisher SJ, Giudice LC. Retrospective. Robert G. Edwards (1925-2013). Science 2013;340:825.

A journal article with 3 authors

[1]

Van Dyck D, Jinschek JR, Chen F-R. “Big Bang” tomography as a new route to atomic-resolution electron tomography. Nature 2012;486:243–6.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

[1]

Grishchuk EL, Molodtsov MI, Ataullakhanov FI, McIntosh JR. Force production by disassembling microtubules. Nature 2005;438:384–8.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

[1]

Lee M, Bieker G. Mastering. Indianapolis, IN, USA: Wiley Publishing, Inc.; 2009.

An edited book

[1]

Gkonou C, Tatzl D, Mercer S, editors. New Directions in Language Learning Psychology. Cham: Springer International Publishing; 2016.

A chapter in an edited book

[1]

Ishida H, Ide I, Murase H. Subspace Construction from Artificially Generated Images for Traffic Sign Recognition. In: Chen Y-W, C. Jain L, editors. Subspace Methods for Pattern Recognition in Intelligent Environment, Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer; 2014, p. 83–104.

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. Could Dark Matter Actually Just Be Black Holes? IFLScience 2016.

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. Head Start: Challenges Faced in Demonstrating Program Results and Responding to Societal Changes. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 1998.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

[1]

Wheatley BA. Leadership styles of healthcare executives: Comparisons of transformational, transactional, and passive-avoidant styles. Doctoral dissertation. Northcentral University, 2010.

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]

Koblin J. Fox Sidelines Legal Analyst After Wiretap Allegation. New York Times 2017:B4.

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