How to format your references using the Cellular and Molecular Life Sciences citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Cellular and Molecular Life Sciences. 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

Nield T (2008) A tribe of jobbing ditchers. Nature 451:258–260

A journal article with 2 authors

Greaves M, Maley CC (2012) Clonal evolution in cancer. Nature 481:306–313

A journal article with 3 authors

Richardson JJ, Björnmalm M, Caruso F (2015) Multilayer assembly. Technology-driven layer-by-layer assembly of nanofilms. Science 348:aaa2491

A journal article with 5 or more authors

Song T, Cai X, Tu MW-Y, et al (2018) Giant tunneling magnetoresistance in spin-filter van der Waals heterostructures. Science 360:1214–1218

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Gowler DB (2013) James Through the Centuries. John Wiley & Sons, Oxford

An edited book

Levitt JO, Sobanko JF (2015) Safety in Office-Based Dermatologic Surgery. Springer International Publishing, Cham

A chapter in an edited book

García-Fernández N, Macher HC, Rubio A, et al (2016) Detection of p53 Mutations in Circulating DNA of Transplanted Hepatocellular Carcinoma Patients as a Biomarker of Tumor Recurrence. In: Gahan PB, Fleischhacker M, Schmidt B (eds) Circulating Nucleic Acids in Serum and Plasma – CNAPS IX. Springer International Publishing, Cham, pp 25–28

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 Cellular and Molecular Life Sciences.

Blog post

Andrew E (2015) Black Holes are the new Dark Matter Laboratories. In: IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/space/black-hole-are-new-dark-matter-laboratories/. Accessed 30 Oct 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 (2006) No Child Left Behind Act: Education Actions Needed to Improve Implementation and Evaluation of Supplemental Educational Services. U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Large KG (2008) A study of Statewide Transfer and Articulation Reporting System (STARS) approved courses completed at an Alabama community college. Doctoral dissertation, Mississippi State University

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

Paulson M (2017) Broadway Revival Set For Lauded ‘Angels.’ New York Times C2

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	Cellular and Molecular Life Sciences
Abbreviation	Cell. Mol. Life Sci.
ISSN (print)	1420-682X
ISSN (online)	1420-9071
Scope	Cell Biology Molecular Biology Molecular Medicine Cellular and Molecular Neuroscience Pharmacology