How to format your references using the Microchimica Acta citation style

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

Batt CA (2007) Materials science. Food pathogen detection. Science 316:1579–1580

A journal article with 2 authors

Rowley DB, Currie BS (2006) Palaeo-altimetry of the late Eocene to Miocene Lunpola basin, central Tibet. Nature 439:677–681

A journal article with 3 authors

Wu SW, Ogawa N, Ho W (2006) Atomic-scale coupling of photons to single-molecule junctions. Science 312:1362–1365

A journal article with 5 or more authors

Boutin S, Wauters LA, McAdam AG, et al (2006) Anticipatory reproduction and population growth in seed predators. Science 314:1928–1930

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Lueder E (2011) 3D Displays. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, Chichester, UK

An edited book

Osaki M, Tsuji N (2016) Tropical Peatland Ecosystems. Springer Japan, Tokyo

A chapter in an edited book

Wang V, Carayannis EG (2012) Results. In: Carayannis EG (ed) Promoting Balanced Competitiveness Strategies of Firms in Developing Countries. Springer, New York, NY, pp 73–89

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 Microchimica Acta.

Blog post

Luntz S (2014) Spray-On Nanofibres Bind Surgical Wounds. In: IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/spray-nanofibres-bind-surgical-wounds/. 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 (1989) Health Care: Home Care Experiences of Families With Chronically Ill Children. 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

Packman T (2017) The Effects of Eccentricity on Rectangular Hollow Structural Section Stress in Moment Connections Loaded Out-of-Plane. Doctoral dissertation, Southern Illinois University

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

Barry E, Kramer AE (2012) In Biting Cold, Protesters Pack the Center of Moscow to Rally Against Putin. New York Times A8

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	Microchimica Acta
Abbreviation	Mikrochim. Acta
ISSN (print)	0026-3672
ISSN (online)	1436-5073
Scope	Analytical Chemistry