How to format your references using the BBA - Molecular Cell Research citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for BBA - Molecular Cell Research. 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
[1]
J.A. Evans, Computer science. Future science, Science 342 (2013) 44–45.
A journal article with 2 authors
[1]
C. Raiborg, H. Stenmark, The ESCRT machinery in endosomal sorting of ubiquitylated membrane proteins, Nature 458 (2009) 445–452.
A journal article with 3 authors
[1]
A. Giannini, R. Saravanan, P. Chang, Oceanic forcing of Sahel rainfall on interannual to interdecadal time scales, Science 302 (2003) 1027–1030.
A journal article with 4 or more authors
[1]
M. Horie, T. Honda, Y. Suzuki, Y. Kobayashi, T. Daito, T. Oshida, K. Ikuta, P. Jern, T. Gojobori, J.M. Coffin, K. Tomonaga, Endogenous non-retroviral RNA virus elements in mammalian genomes, Nature 463 (2010) 84–87.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book
[1]
A.R. Mishra, Cellular Technologies for Emerging Markets, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, Chichester, UK, 2010.
An edited book
[1]
H. Ieda, ed., Sustainable Urban Transport in an Asian Context, Springer Japan, Tokyo, 2010.
A chapter in an edited book
[1]
N. Kulsrisombat, De Facto Urban Regeneration: A Case Study of Chiang Mai City, Thailand, in: T. Kidokoro, N. Harata, L.P. Subanu, J. Jessen, A. Motte, E.P. Seltzer (Eds.), Sustainable City Regions: Space, Place and Governance, Springer Japan, Tokyo, 2008: pp. 77–100.

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 BBA - Molecular Cell Research.

Blog post
[1]
E. Andrew, Six Things You Can Do With Coffee – After You’ve Finished Drinking It, IFLScience (2015). https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/six-things-you-can-do-coffee-after-you-ve-finished-drinking-it/ (accessed October 30, 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
[1]
Government Accountability Office, F-22 Aircraft: Progress of the Engineering and Manufacturing Development Program, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC, 1998.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation
[1]
J. Casem, Moku Ka Pawa: Drawn to the Light, Doctoral dissertation, California State University, Long Beach, 2009.

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
[1]
K. Crow, Untouched, But Touched, New York Times (2001) 141.

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 titleBBA - Molecular Cell Research
AbbreviationBiochim. Biophys. Acta Mol. Cell Res.
ISSN (print)0167-4889
ScopeCell Biology
Molecular Biology

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