How to format your references using the The ISME Journal citation style

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

van den Bogaard P. The origin of the Canary Island Seamount Province - new ages of old seamounts. Sci Rep 2013;3:2107.

A journal article with 2 authors

Maund JR, Smartt SJ. The disappearance of the progenitors of supernovae 1993J and 2003gd. Science 2009;324:486–488.

A journal article with 3 authors

Jansen JFA, Gearhart JD, Bulte JWM. Comment on ‘Magnetic resonance spectroscopy identifies neural progenitor cells in the live human brain’. Science 2008;321:640.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Sharifi S et al. Superparamagnetic iron oxide nanoparticles alter expression of obesity and T2D-associated risk genes in human adipocytes. Sci Rep 2013;3:2173.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Mastro PF. Plastics Product Design. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2016.

An edited book

Yonekawa Y et al. (eds). New Trends of Surgery for Stroke and its Perioperative Management. Vienna: Springer, 2005.

A chapter in an edited book

Kim D-H, Kim K-R, Kim H-J. Bunker Oil C Heating Using Induction Heating. In: Lee J et al. (eds.), Intelligent Robotics and Applications: 6th International Conference, ICIRA 2013, Busan, South Korea, September 25-28, 2013, Proceedings, Part I. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer, 2013, 25–30.

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 The ISME Journal.

Blog post

Andrews R. Spectacular Eruption At Japanese Volcano Creates Sky High Plume Bathed In Lightning. IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/environment/spectacular-eruption-japanese-volcano-creates-sky-high-plume-bathed-lightning/. (28 July 2016, date last accessed).

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. Aviation Safety: FAA Needs to Strengthen the Management of Its Designee Programs. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 2004.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Brown JD. Disparity in healthcare among Black Americans in the United States, a review of the literature. 2012. Doctoral dissertation, California State University, Long Beach.

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

Feeney K. Cupcakes a Chicken Can Love. New York Times . 2007. 2007. , NJ12

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	The ISME Journal
Abbreviation	ISME J.
ISSN (print)	1751-7362
ISSN (online)	1751-7370
Scope	Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics Microbiology