How to format your references using the Cells citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Cells. 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	Find the style here: output styles overview
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

Buzsáki, G. The Structure of Consciousness. Nature 2007, 446, 267.

A journal article with 2 authors

Marande, W.; Burger, G. Mitochondrial DNA as a Genomic Jigsaw Puzzle. Science 2007, 318, 415.

A journal article with 3 authors

Maamar, H.; Raj, A.; Dubnau, D. Noise in Gene Expression Determines Cell Fate in Bacillus Subtilis. Science 2007, 317, 526–529.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Antson, A.A.; Burns, J.E.; Moroz, O.V.; Scott, D.J.; Sanders, C.M.; Bronstein, I.B.; Dodson, G.G.; Wilson, K.S.; Maitland, N.J. Structure of the Intact Transactivation Domain of the Human Papillomavirus E2 Protein. Nature 2000, 403, 805–809.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Marteel-Parrish, A.E.; Abraham, M.A. Green Chemistry and Engineering; John Wiley & Sons, Inc: Hoboken, NJ, 2013; ISBN 9781118720011.

An edited book

Formal Techniques for Distributed Systems: Joint 14th IFIP WG 6.1 International Conference, FMOODS 2012 and 32nd IFIP WG 6.1 International Conference, FORTE 2012, Stockholm, Sweden, June 13-16, 2012. Proceedings; Giese, H., Rosu, G., Eds.; Lecture Notes in Computer Science; Springer: Berlin, Heidelberg, 2012; Vol. 7273; ISBN 9783642307928.

A chapter in an edited book

Stackowiak, R.; Licht, A.; Mantha, V.; Nagode, L. Understanding Organizational Skills. In Big Data and the Internet of Things: Enterprise Information Architecture for a New Age; Licht, A., Mantha, V., Nagode, L., Eds.; Apress: Berkeley, CA, 2015; pp. 99–113 ISBN 9781484209875.

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 Cells.

Blog post

Hale, T. This 104-Year-Old Cyclist Is Beating The Science Of Aging Available online: https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/this-104yearold-cyclist-is-beating-the-science-of-aging/ (accessed on 30 October 2018).

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 Automated Information Systems: Schedule Delays and Cost Overruns Plague DOD Systems; U.S. Government Printing Office: Washington, DC, 1989;

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Younis, K.M. The Impact of Moral Values on Ethical Practices in Environmental Management. Doctoral dissertation, University of Phoenix: Phoenix, AZ, 2013.

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

Billard, M. Lessons From a Master Shopper. New York Times 2013, E14.

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	Cells
Abbreviation	Cells
ISSN (online)	2073-4409
Scope