How to format your references using the Cell Communication and Signaling citation style

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

1. Polman A. Applied physics. Plasmonics applied. Science. 2008;322:868–9.

A journal article with 2 authors

1. Buckling A, Rainey PB. The role of parasites in sympatric and allopatric host diversification. Nature. 2002;420:496–9.

A journal article with 3 authors

1. White N, Thompson M, Barwise T. Understanding the thermal evolution of deep-water continental margins. Nature. 2003;426:334–43.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

1. Kanungo M, Lu H, Malliaras GG, Blanchet GB. Suppression of metallic conductivity of single-walled carbon nanotubes by cycloaddition reactions. Science. 2009;323:234–7.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

1. Knight HJ. Patent Strategy. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd; 2012.

An edited book

1. Masferrer A, editor. Post 9/11 and the State of Permanent Legal Emergency: Security and Human Rights in Countering Terrorism. Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands; 2012.

A chapter in an edited book

1. Muraoka T, Watanabe Y, Kanosue K. Intra- and Inter-person Coordinated Movements of Fingers and Toes. In: Kanosue K, Nagami T, Tsuchiya J, editors. Sports Performance. Tokyo: Springer Japan; 2015. p. 37–48.

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 Communication and Signaling.

Blog post

1. Davis J. The Maya Civilization May Have Experienced Two Declines Before Collapsing Forever. IFLScience. IFLScience; 2017.

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. Health and Human Services’ Estimate of Health Care Cost Savings Resulting from the Use of Information Technology. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 2005 Feb. Report No.: GAO-05-309R.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

1. Thiss PJ. Effects of dedicated academic support services on the persistence rates of California Community College student-athletes [Doctoral dissertation]. [Scottsdale, AZ]: Northcentral University; 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. Dynarski S. 왜 영재반에서는 흑인과 히스패닉 학생을 보기 힘들까? New York Times. 2016 Jun 8;BU6.

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 title	Cell Communication and Signaling
Abbreviation	Cell Commun. Signal.
ISSN (online)	1478-811X
Scope	Biochemistry Cell Biology Molecular Biology