How to format your references using the Metabolism Open citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Metabolism Open. 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	Find the style here: output styles overview
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

[1]

Primack J. Astronomy. Hidden growth of supermassive black holes in galaxy mergers. Science 2010;328:576–8.

A journal article with 2 authors

[1]

Ding L, Morrison SJ. Haematopoietic stem cells and early lymphoid progenitors occupy distinct bone marrow niches. Nature 2013;495:231–5.

A journal article with 3 authors

[1]

Kiessling W, Simpson C, Foote M. Reefs as cradles of evolution and sources of biodiversity in the Phanerozoic. Science 2010;327:196–8.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

[1]

Yoshida H, Bando T, Mito T, Ohuchi H, Noji S. An extended steepness model for leg-size determination based on Dachsous/Fat trans-dimer system. Sci Rep 2014;4:4335.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

[1]

Abid MM. Spacecraft Sensors. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd; 2006.

An edited book

[1]

Loughran J, Smith K, Berry A, editors. Scientific Literacy Under the Microscope: A Whole School Approach to Science Teaching and Learning. vol. 11. Rotterdam: SensePublishers; 2011.

A chapter in an edited book

[1]

Turner ME, Fireman M. Evaluating the Biopsychosocial Milieu of Chronic Pain. In: Matthews AM, Fellers JC, editors. Treating Comorbid Opioid Use Disorder in Chronic Pain, Cham: Springer International Publishing; 2016, p. 35–45.

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 Metabolism Open.

Blog post

[1]

Andrew E. 13-Year-Old Becomes Youngest Scientist to Achieve Nuclear Fusion. IFLScience 2014.

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. Stronger Actions Needed To Recover $730 Million in Defaulted National Direct Student Loans. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 1981.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

[1]

Shah N. High Performance Cryptography for Electronic Product Code for Internet of Things Applications. Doctoral dissertation. University of Louisiana, 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]

Powell M. Scaling Past Death. New York Times 2017:SP1.

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	Metabolism Open
ISSN (print)	2589-9368
Scope