How to format your references using the mBio citation style

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

Koenig R. 2000. EASTERN EUROPE: Science Survives in Breakaway States. Science 290:692–693.

A journal article with 2 authors

Sosdian S, Rosenthal Y. 2009. Deep-sea temperature and ice volume changes across the Pliocene-Pleistocene climate transitions. Science 325:306–310.

A journal article with 3 authors

Butterworth B, Varma S, Laurillard D. 2011. Dyscalculia: from brain to education. Science 332:1049–1053.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Borovikova LV, Ivanova S, Zhang M, Yang H, Botchkina GI, Watkins LR, Wang H, Abumrad N, Eaton JW, Tracey KJ. 2000. Vagus nerve stimulation attenuates the systemic inflammatory response to endotoxin. Nature 405:458–462.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Tagare DM. 2011. Electric Power Generation. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ.

An edited book

2015. Fundamentals of Software Engineering: 6th International Conference, FSEN 2015, Tehran, Iran, April 22-24, 2015. Revised Selected Papers. Springer International Publishing, Cham.

A chapter in an edited book

Barber C. 2007. Augmentation of Groundwater Resources through Aquifer Storage and Recovery (ASR) Method, p. 112–127. In Thangarajan, M (ed.), Groundwater: Resource Evaluation, Augmentation, Contamination, Restoration, Modeling and Management. Springer Netherlands, Dordrecht.

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 mBio.

Blog post

Andrew E. 2013. Troubling Times for Tigers. IFLScience. IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/troubling-times-tigers/. Retrieved 30 October 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

Government Accountability Office. 2009. NASA: Projects Need More Disciplined Oversight and Management to Address Key Challenges. GAO-09-436T. 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

Adelman SW. 2009. Early childhood nutritional responses to targeted food aid and social network disruptions in Ugandan internally displaced person’s camps. Doctoral dissertation. University of Maryland, College Park, College Park, MD.

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

Hubbard B. 2017. With Driving Ban Ending, Saudis Wonder Which Rules Will Fall Next. New York Times.

In-text citations

References should be cited in the text by sequential numbers in parentheses:

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	mBio
Abbreviation	MBio
ISSN (online)	2150-7511
Scope	Microbiology Virology