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:

PaperpileThe citation style is built in and you can choose it in Settings > Citation Style or Paperpile > Citation Style in Google Docs.
EndNoteDownload the output style file
Mendeley, Zotero, Papers, and othersThe style is either built in or you can download a CSL file that is supported by most references management programs.
BibTeXBibTeX 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]
Christianson DW. Biochemistry. Five golden rings. Science 2006;311:1382–3.
A journal article with 2 authors
[1]
Rothenberg KH, Terry SF. Human genetics. Before it’s too late--addressing fear of genetic information. Science 2002;297:196–7.
A journal article with 3 authors
[1]
Gnone G, Moriconi T, Gambini G. Sleep behaviour: activity and sleep in dolphins. Nature 2006;441:E10-1; discussion E11.
A journal article with 7 or more authors
[1]
Luchtmann M, Beuing O, Skalej M, Kohl J, Serowy S, Bernarding J, et al. Gadolinium-enhanced magnetic resonance angiography in brain death. Sci Rep 2014;4:3659.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book
[1]
Wang L, Tan KC. Modern Industrial Automation Software Design. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.; 2005.
An edited book
[1]
Chen L, Mitchell C, editors. Security Standardisation Research: First International Conference, SSR 2014, London, UK, December 16-17, 2014. Proceedings. vol. 8893. Cham: Springer International Publishing; 2014.
A chapter in an edited book
[1]
Emoto K, Hu Z, Kakehi K, Matsuzaki K, Takeichi M. Generators-of-Generators Library with Optimization Capabilities in Fortress. In: D’Ambra P, Guarracino M, Talia D, editors. Euro-Par 2010 - Parallel Processing: 16th International Euro-Par Conference, Ischia, Italy, August 31 - September 3, 2010, Proceedings, Part II, Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer; 2010, p. 26–37.

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. Scientists Discover New Phase Of Matter. IFLScience 2015. https://www.iflscience.com/physics/new-ordered-phase-matter-discovered/ (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. Information Technology: SBA Needs to Strengthen Oversight of Its Loan Management and Accounting System Modernization. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 2012.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation
[1]
Gilmore KD. With their heads in the lion’s mouth: Exploring the novels of Zora Neale Hurston, Richard Wright and Ralph Ellison through social contract theory. Doctoral dissertation. California State University, Long Beach, 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]
Roach M. Not an Accident. New York Times 2016:BR8.

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 titleResearch in Microbiology
AbbreviationRes. Microbiol.
ISSN (print)0923-2508
ScopeMolecular Biology
Microbiology
General Medicine

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