How to format your references using the Microbial Genomics citation style

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

Sandrian MG. A European postdoc for the family. Science 2015;347:346.

A journal article with 2 authors

Boesz C, Lloyd N. Collaborations: investigating international misconduct. Nature 2008;452:686–687.

A journal article with 3 authors

Ko HW, Jiang J, Edery I. Role for Slimb in the degradation of Drosophila Period protein phosphorylated by Doubletime. Nature 2002;420:673–678.

A journal article with 6 or more authors

Wang G, Ji J, Zhang X, Zhang Y, Wang Q, et al. Colloidal nanocrystals fluoresced by surface coordination complexes. Sci Rep 2014;4:5480.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Perez RX, Conkey AP. Troubleshooting Rotating Machinery. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley &;#38; Sons, Inc.; 2016.

An edited book

Bretzke W-R. Sustainable Logistics: Responses to a Global Challenge. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer; 2013.

A chapter in an edited book

Cari C, Suparmi A. Application of Nikiforov-Uvarov Method for Non-central Potential System Solution. In: Gaol FL, Shrivastava K, Akhtar J (editors). Recent Trends in Physics of Material Science and Technology. Singapore: Springer; 2015. pp. 67–93.

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 Microbial Genomics.

Blog post

Fang J. Seven Dwarf Galaxies Discovered. IFLScience.

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. NASA: Assessments of Selected Large-Scale Projects. GAO-10-227SP; Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 1 February 2010.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Regmi K. Computer Vision and Image Processing Toolbox for MATLAB. Doctoral Dissertation; Southern Illinois University; 2015.

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

Wagner J. Like Cubs, the Nationals Seek to End a Drought. New York Times, 13 October 2016, p. B9.

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	Microbial Genomics
Abbreviation	Microb. Genom.
ISSN (online)	2057-5858
Scope