How to format your references using the Microbiome Research Reports citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Microbiome Research Reports (MRR). 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

Berkman PA. International spaces promote peace. Nature 2009;462:412–3. [PMID: 19940900]

A journal article with 2 authors

Mota B, Herculano-Houzel S. BRAIN STRUCTURE. Cortical folding scales universally with surface area and thickness, not number of neurons. Science 2015;349:74–7. [PMID: 26138976]

A journal article with 3 authors

Shema R, Sacktor TC, Dudai Y. Rapid erasure of long-term memory associations in the cortex by an inhibitor of PKM zeta. Science 2007;317:951–3. [PMID: 17702943]

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Wu J, Xu J, Liu B, Yao G, Wang P, Lin Z, et al. Chromatin analysis in human early development reveals epigenetic transition during ZGA. Nature 2018;557:256–60. [PMID: 29720659]

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Stone CA, Zissu A. The Securitization Markets Handbook. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.; 2012.

An edited book

Netzer FP, Fortunelli A, editors. Oxide Materials at the Two-Dimensional Limit. Cham: Springer International Publishing; 2016.

A chapter in an edited book

Telnarova Z. RDF Data Models in Oracle. In: Abd Manaf A, Sahibuddin S, Ahmad R, Mohd Daud S, El-Qawasmeh E, editors. Informatics Engineering and Information Science: International Conference, ICIEIS 2011, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, November 14-16, 2011, Proceedings, Part IV. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer; 2011. pp. 52–64.

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 Microbiome Research Reports.

Blog post

Luntz S. Climate Change Shortening Bees’ Tongues. IFLScience 2015. Available from: https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/climate-change-shortening-bees-tongues/. [Last accessed 30 Oct 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. Medical Education: Curriculum and Financing Strategies Need to Encourage Primary Care Training. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 1994.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Jordan EA. The semiconductor industry and emerging technologies: A study using a modified Delphi method. Doctoral dissertation. University of Phoenix; 2010.

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

Rosenberg E. American Airlines Suspends Worker After Episode on Plane. New York Times 2017;:A18.

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	Microbiome Research Reports
ISSN (print)	2771-5965
Scope