How to format your references using the Systematic and Applied Microbiology citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Systematic and Applied Microbiology (SYAPM). 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]

Schlotterer, C. (2003) Genetics. Where do male genes live? Science 299(5607), 670–1.

A journal article with 2 authors

[1]

Mellor, N., Bishopp, A. (2014) Plant science. The innermost secrets of root development. Science 345(6197), 622–3.

A journal article with 3 authors

[1]

Lustig, R.H., Schmidt, L.A., Brindis, C.D. (2012) Public health: The toxic truth about sugar. Nature 482(7383), 27–9.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

[1]

Ochiai, H., Sugawara, T., Sakuma, T., Yamamoto, T. (2014) Stochastic promoter activation affects Nanog expression variability in mouse embryonic stem cells. Sci. Rep. 4, 7125.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

[1]

Knudsen, S. (2005) Cancer Diagnostics with DNA Microarrays. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ.

An edited book

[1]

Casanova, F., Perlo, J., Blümich, B. (2011) Single-Sided NMR. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg.

A chapter in an edited book

[1]

Lousame, F.P., Sánchez, E. (2009) A Taxonomy of Collaborative-Based Recommender Systems. In: Castellano, G., Jain, L.C., Fanelli, A.M., (Eds.), Web Personalization in Intelligent Environments, Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, pp. 81–117.

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 Systematic and Applied Microbiology.

Blog post

[1]

Hamilton, K. (2016) Can Monkeys Have Autism? The Answer Could Help Us Understand What Causes The Condition. IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/brain/can-monkeys-have-autism-the-answer-could-help-us-understand-what-causes-the-condition/. [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. (1991) Railroad Safety: Weaknesses Exist in FRA’s Enforcement Program. 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

[1]

Manandhar, R. (2017) Synthesis and Characterization of Some Novel Dinitrosyl Diphosphine Iron Complexes. Doctoral dissertation, 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

[1]

Tierney, J. (2017) Easy Ways to Mend Your Marriage. New York Times, D4.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference [2].
This sentence cites two references [3,4].
This sentence cites four references [4,5,7,8].

About the journal

Full journal title	Systematic and Applied Microbiology
Abbreviation	Syst. Appl. Microbiol.
ISSN (print)	0723-2020
ISSN (online)	1618-0984
Scope	Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics Applied Microbiology and Biotechnology Microbiology