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

Sherwood Lollar, B. (2004). Geochemistry. Life’s chemical kitchen. Science 304, 972–973.

A journal article with 2 authors

Jing, J., and Wu, L.-A. (2013). Control of decoherence with no control. Sci. Rep. 3, 2746.

A journal article with 3 authors

Ryu, H.-W., Park, C.-W., and Ryu, K.-Y. (2014). Disruption of polyubiquitin gene Ubb causes dysregulation of neural stem cell differentiation with premature gliogenesis. Sci. Rep. 4, 7026.

A journal article with 11 or more authors

Barabash, S., Fedorov, A., Lundin, R., and Sauvaud, J.-A. (2007). Martian atmospheric erosion rates. Science 315, 501–503.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Kelsey, J.E., Newport, D.J., and Nemeroff, C.B. (2006). Principles of Psychopharmacology for Mental Health Professionals (John Wiley & Sons, Inc.).

An edited book

Cai, J.-Y., Cooper, S.B., and Li, A. eds. (2006). Theory and Applications of Models of Computation: Third International Conference, TAMC 2006, Beijing, China, May 15-20, 2006. Proceedings (Springer).

A chapter in an edited book

Roco, M.C., and Bainbridge, W.S. (2007). Ethics and Law. In Nanotechnology: Societal Implications: Individual Perspectives, M. C. Roco and W. S. Bainbridge, eds. (Springer Netherlands), pp. 169–205.

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

Davis, J. (2017). Direct Genetic Link Found Between Indigenous East Asian Group And Stone Age Ancestors. IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/editors-blog/direct-genetic-link-found-between-indigenous-east-asian-group-and-stone-age-ancestors/.

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 (2010). Telecommunications: FCC’s Performance Management Weaknesses Could Jeopardize Proposed Reforms of the Rural Health Care Program (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

Lambert, M. (2015). Generational Differences in the Workplace: The Perspectives of Three Generations on Career Mobility.

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

Barnard, A., Hubbard, B., and Fisher, I. (2017). As Atrocities Mount in Syria, Justice Seems Out of Reach. New York Times, A1.

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