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

Rich P. 2003. Chemiosmotic coupling: The cost of living. Nature. 421(6923):583

A journal article with 2 authors

Convey P, Stevens MI. 2007. Ecology. Antarctic biodiversity. Science. 317(5846):1877–78

A journal article with 3 authors

Nowak MA, Komarova NL, Niyogi P. 2002. Computational and evolutionary aspects of language. Nature. 417(6889):611–17

A journal article with 7 or more authors

O’Neill E, Rushworth L, Baccarini M, Kolch W. 2004. Role of the kinase MST2 in suppression of apoptosis by the proto-oncogene product Raf-1. Science. 306(5705):2267–70

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Burgess M. 2005. Analytical Network and System Administration. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd

An edited book

Snidaro L, García J, Llinas J, Blasch E, eds. 2016. Context-Enhanced Information Fusion: Boosting Real-World Performance with Domain Knowledge. Cham: Springer International Publishing

A chapter in an edited book

Bochenkova AV, Andersen LH. 2013. Photo-initiated Dynamics and Spectroscopy of the Deprotonated Green Fluorescent Protein Chromophore. In Photophysics of Ionic Biochromophores, eds. S Brøndsted Nielsen, JA Wyer, pp. 67–103. 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

O`Callaghan J. 2016. SpaceX Has Released 3 Camera Views Of Its Latest Rocket Barge Landing. IFLScience

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. 2000. Early Childhood Programs: Characteristics Affect the Availability of School Readiness Information. HEHS-00-38, 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

Scott E. 2013. Effects of cultural nutritional education among Hispanic women with diabetes. Doctoral dissertation thesis. 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

CHARKES; Mary Jo J, Reporting LSC. 2009. A Spring Surprise: Openings in Preschools. New York Times, April 26, , p. WE1

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Rich 2003).
This sentence cites two references (Convey & Stevens 2007; Rich 2003).

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

Two authors: (Convey & Stevens 2007)
Three or more authors: (O’Neill et al. 2004)

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

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