How to format your references using the Letters in Applied Microbiology citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Letters in Applied Microbiology (LAM). 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 reference managers.
BibTeX	BibTeX styles 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

Schreiber, M.R. (2013) Astronomy. One good measure. Science. 340, 932–933.

A journal article with 2 authors

Worby, C.A. and Dixon, J.E. (2006) Microbiology. Bacteria seize control by acetylating host proteins. Science. 312, 1150–1151.

A journal article with 3 authors

Kasting, J.F., Catling, D.C. and Zahnle, K. (2012) Atmospheric oxygenation and volcanism. Nature. 487, E1; discussion E2.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Karuppagounder, S.S., Brahmachari, S., Lee, Y., Dawson, V.L., Dawson, T.M. and Ko, H.S. (2014) The c-Abl inhibitor, nilotinib, protects dopaminergic neurons in a preclinical animal model of Parkinson’s disease. Sci Rep. 4, 4874.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Helsel, D.R. (2011) Statistics for Censored Environmental Data Using Minitab® and R. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

An edited book

Dasari, A. (2016) Polymer Nanocomposites: Towards Multi-Functionality. Engineering Materials and Processes. London: Springer.

A chapter in an edited book

Wallinger, C.F. and Brandner, M. (2013) Time-of-Flight Estimation Using Synchronized Chaotic Systems. In Selected Topics in Nonlinear Dynamics and Theoretical Electrical Engineering, , Studies in Computational Intelligence ed. Kyamakya, K., Halang, W.A., Mathis, W., Chedjou, J.C. and Li, Z. pp.61–79. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer.

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 Letters in Applied Microbiology.

Blog post

Hale, T. (2016) Butterfly Numbers Saw Record Lows This Summer In The UK [WWW Document]. IFLScience. URL https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/butterfly-numbers-saw-record-lows-this-summer-in-the-uk/.

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 (2000) Transit Grants: Department of Labor’s Certification Process ( No. T-RCED-00-157). 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

Han, B. (2008) Mechanistic Consequences of Cardiac Oxidative Stress. Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University, Columbus, OH.

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

Billard, M. (2010) Home Is a Place to Hang His Hats. New York Times. E5.

In-text citations

References should be cited in the text by name and year in parentheses:

This sentence cites one reference (Schreiber, 2013).
This sentence cites two references (Worby & Dixon, 2006; Schreiber, 2013).

Here are examples of in-text citations with multiple authors:

Two authors: (Worby & Dixon, 2006)
Three authors: (Kasting, Catling & Zahnle, 2012)
4 or more authors: (Karuppagounder et al., 2014)

About the journal

Full journal title	Letters in Applied Microbiology
ISSN (print)	0266-8254
ISSN (online)	1472-765X
Scope