How to format your references using the Annual Review of Cell and Developmental Biology citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Annual Review of Cell and Developmental Biology. 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:

PaperpileThe citation style is built in and you can choose it in Settings > Citation Style or Paperpile > Citation Style in Google Docs.
EndNoteDownload the output style file
Mendeley, Zotero, Papers, and othersThe style is either built in or you can download a CSL file that is supported by most references management programs.
BibTeXBibTeX syles 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
Trewavas A. 2002. Malthus foiled again and again. Nature. 418(6898):668–70
A journal article with 2 authors
Satheesh SK, Ramanathan V V. 2000. Large differences in tropical aerosol forcing at the top of the atmosphere and Earth’s surface. Nature. 405(6782):60–63
A journal article with 3 authors
Coussens LM, Fingleton B, Matrisian LM. 2002. Matrix metalloproteinase inhibitors and cancer: trials and tribulations. Science. 295(5564):2387–92
A journal article with 7 or more authors
Rosenstiel TN, Potosnak MJ, Griffin KL, Fall R, Monson RK. 2003. Increased CO2 uncouples growth from isoprene emission in an agriforest ecosystem. Nature. 421(6920):256–59

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book
Stolarski TA, Tobe S. 2000. Rolling Contacts. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd
An edited book
Poston DL Jr, Yang WS, Farris DN, eds. 2014. The Family and Social Change in Chinese Societies, Vol. 35. Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands
A chapter in an edited book
Razavi M, Aliee FS. 2009. An Approach towards Enterprise Interoperability Assessment. In Enterprise Interoperability: Second IFIP WG 5.8 International Workshop, IWEI 2009, Valencia, Spain, October 13-14, 2009. Proceedings, eds. R Poler, M van Sinderen, R Sanchis, pp. 52–65. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer

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 Annual Review of Cell and Developmental Biology.

Blog post
Fang J. 2015. Elaborate Accessories Keep Predators Away From Decorator Crabs. IFLScience. www.iflscience.com

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. 1975. Information on the New Community of Soul City, North Carolina. RED-76-52, 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
He C. 2005. Advanced Wavelet Application for Video Compression and Video Object Tracking. Doctoral dissertation thesis. Ohio State 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
George N. 2013. Red and Black. New York Times, Sep. 22, , p. BR12

In-text citations

References should be cited in the text by name and year in parentheses:

This sentence cites one reference (Trewavas 2002).
This sentence cites two references (Satheesh & Ramanathan 2000; Trewavas 2002).

Here are examples of in-text citations with multiple authors:

  • Two authors: (Satheesh & Ramanathan 2000)
  • Three or more authors: (Rosenstiel et al. 2003)

About the journal

Full journal titleAnnual Review of Cell and Developmental Biology
AbbreviationAnnu. Rev. Cell Dev. Biol.
ISSN (print)1081-0706
ISSN (online)1530-8995
ScopeCell Biology
Developmental Biology

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