How to format your references using the Cell Research citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for 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. Dernburg AF. Molecular biology. RNA plays meiotic matchmaker. Science 2012; 336:681–682.
A journal article with 2 authors
1. Raymond PA, Cole JJ. Increase in the export of alkalinity from North America’s largest river. Science 2003; 301:88–91.
A journal article with 3 authors
1. Preis T, Moat HS, Stanley HE. Quantifying trading behavior in financial markets using Google Trends. Sci Rep 2013; 3:1684.
A journal article with 7 or more authors
1. Burgess SA, Walker ML, Sakakibara H, Knight PJ, Oiwa K. Dynein structure and power stroke. Nature 2003; 421:715–718.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book
1. Kunz W. Do Species Exist? Weinheim, Germany: Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA; 2012.
An edited book
1. Gardoni P, LaFave JM eds. Multi-hazard Approaches to Civil Infrastructure Engineering. Cham: Springer International Publishing; 2016.
A chapter in an edited book
1. Mané AM, Levin E. Designing the Voice User Interface for Automated Directory Assistance. In: Blanchard HE, ed. Human Factors and Voice Interactive Systems. Signals and Communication Technology. Boston, MA: Springer US; 2008:117–134.

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 Research.

Blog post
1. Fang J. Speedy But “Bearded” Ladies Get No Love From Male Lizards. IFLScience 2015.

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. NASA’s X-33 and X-34 Programs. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 2001.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation
1. Holvick-Norton T. Becoming Whole: The Process of Individuation for Women and Their Bodies. 2015.

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. Kelly L. This great man George Sand; Infamous Woman. New York Times. March 27, 1977:International Economic Survey272.

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 titleCell Research
AbbreviationCell Res.
ISSN (print)1001-0602
ISSN (online)1748-7838
ScopeCell Biology
Molecular Biology

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