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:

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 references management programs.
BibTeX	BibTeX 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

Zaanen J. 2014. High-temperature superconductivity: electron mirages in an iron salt. Nature. 515(7526):205–6

A journal article with 2 authors

Chang G, Roth CB. 2001. Structure of MsbA from E. coli: a homolog of the multidrug resistance ATP binding cassette (ABC) transporters. Science. 293(5536):1793–1800

A journal article with 3 authors

Fowler JH, Johnson T, Smirnov O. 2005. Human behaviour: Egalitarian motive and altruistic punishment. Nature. 433(7021):1 p following 32; discussion following 32

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Staniewicz L, Vaudey T, Degrandcourt C, Couty M, Gaboriaud F, Midgley P. 2014. Electron tomography provides a direct link between the Payne effect and the inter-particle spacing of rubber composites. Sci. Rep. 4:7389

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Böhm M. 2005. Symmetrien in Festkörpern. Weinheim, FRG: Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA

An edited book

Chakraborty UK, ed. 2009. Computational Intelligence in Flow Shop and Job Shop Scheduling, Vol. 230. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer

A chapter in an edited book

Tryggvason G, Lu J, Biswas S, Esmaeeli A. 2009. Studies of Bubbly Channel Flows by Direct Numerical Simulations. In Turbulence and Interactions: Keynote Lectures of the TI 2006 Conference, eds. M Deville, T-H Lê, P Sagaut, pp. 93–111. 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

Andrew E. 2015. What Makes Our Brains Unique? 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. 2006. Media Contracts: Activities and Financial Obligations for Seven Federal Departments. GAO-06-305, 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

Ratzlaff K. 2012. Dynamics of chytrid fungus (Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis) infection in amphibians in the Rincon Mountains and Tucson, Arizona. Doctoral dissertation thesis. University of Arizona

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

McNAMARA J. 2017. Falling Through Time. New York Times, Sep. 8, , p. BR14

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Zaanen 2014).
This sentence cites two references (Chang & Roth 2001; Zaanen 2014).

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

Two authors: (Chang & Roth 2001)
Three or more authors: (Staniewicz et al. 2014)

About the journal

Full journal title	Annual Review of Cell and Developmental Biology
Abbreviation	Annu. Rev. Cell Dev. Biol.
ISSN (print)	1081-0706
ISSN (online)	1530-8995
Scope	Cell Biology Developmental Biology