How to format your references using the Cell citation style

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

Mandavilli, A. (2007). Reinventing an industry. Nature 445, 138–139.

A journal article with 2 authors

Li, N., and Ren, J. (2014). Non-reciprocal geometric wave diode by engineering asymmetric shapes of nonlinear materials. Sci. Rep. 4, 6228.

A journal article with 3 authors

Grirrane, A., Corma, A., and García, H. (2008). Gold-catalyzed synthesis of aromatic azo compounds from anilines and nitroaromatics. Science 322, 1661–1664.

A journal article with 11 or more authors

Hammarström, P., Wiseman, R.L., Powers, E.T., and Kelly, J.W. (2003). Prevention of transthyretin amyloid disease by changing protein misfolding energetics. Science 299, 713–716.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Manuele, F.A. (2005). On the Practice of Safety (John Wiley & Sons, Inc.).

An edited book

Krantz, S.G. (2014). A Mathematical Odyssey: Journey from the Real to the Complex H. R. Parks, ed. (Springer US).

A chapter in an edited book

Johannes, W.J., and Smilde, P.L. (2009). Qualitative Interpretation. In Gravity Interpretation: Fundamentals and Application of Gravity Inversion and Geological Interpretation, P. L. Smilde, ed. (Springer), pp. 181–231.

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 Cell.

Blog post

Carpineti, A. (2017). Giant Viruses Could Be Genetic Frankensteins That Mimic Life. IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/giant-viruses-could-be-genetic-frankensteins-that-mimic-life/.

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 (1994). Weather Forecasting: Improvements Needed in Laboratory Software Development Processes (U.S. Government Printing Office).

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Kyereboah, R. (2015). Criteria For Appointing Board Members to Corporate Boards in Ghana.

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

Crow, K. (2002). Big Trucks Take More Detours, and Residents Near Holland Tunnel Just Smile. New York Times, 145.

In-text citations

References should be cited in the text by sequential numbers in superscript:

This sentence cites one reference ².
This sentence cites two references ^2,4.
This sentence cites four references ^2,4,6,8.

About the journal

Full journal title	Cell
Abbreviation	Cell
ISSN (print)	0092-8674
ISSN (online)	1097-4172
Scope	General Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology