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

Grotzinger, J.P. (2013). Analysis of surface materials by the Curiosity Mars rover. Science 341, 1475. .

A journal article with 2 authors

Phair, R.D., and Misteli, T. (2000). High mobility of proteins in the mammalian cell nucleus. Nature 404, 604–609. .

A journal article with 3 authors

Wolfsberg, T.G., McEntyre, J., and Schuler, G.D. (2001). Guide to the draft human genome. Nature 409, 824–826. .

A journal article with 11 or more authors

Pascual, G., Fong, A.L., Ogawa, S., Gamliel, A., Li, A.C., Perissi, V., Rose, D.W., Willson, T.M., Rosenfeld, M.G., and Glass, C.K. (2005). A SUMOylation-dependent pathway mediates transrepression of inflammatory response genes by PPAR-gamma. Nature 437, 759–763. .

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Motai Ph.D., Y. (2015). Data-Variant Kernel Analysis (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc).

An edited book

(2011). Research and Education in Robotics - EUROBOT 2010: International Conference, Rapperswil-Jona, Switzerland, May 27-30, 2010, Revised Selected Papers (Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer).

A chapter in an edited book

Demant, C., Garnica, C., and Streicher-Abel, B. (2013). Overview: Segmentation. In Industrial Image Processing: Visual Quality Control in Manufacturing, B. Streicher-Abel, and C. Garnica, eds. (Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer), pp. 83–111.

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

Hamilton, K. (2016). Catching Lightning In A Fossil – And Calculating How Much Energy A Strike Contains (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 (2011). Reimbursable Space Act Agreements: NASA Generally Adhering to Fair Reimbursement Controls, but Guidance on Waived Cost Justifications Needs Refinement (Washington, DC: 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

Ramotar-John, B.P. (2014). Supplementing soybean meal with Camelina (Camelina sativa) in tilapia diets and optimizing commercial tilapia diets for use in intensive systems in the Western region of the United States. Doctoral dissertation. 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

Brantley, B. (2016). Strangers Arrive, and the Desert Blooms. New York Times C1. .

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Grotzinger, 2013).
This sentence cites two references (Grotzinger, 2013; Phair and Misteli, 2000).

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

Two authors: (Phair and Misteli, 2000)
Three or more authors: (Pascual et al., 2005)

About the journal

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

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