How to format your references using the Current Opinion in Cell Biology citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Current Opinion in Cell Biology. 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

Wentrup C: Chemistry. Fleeting molecules extend their stay. Science 2001, 292:1846–1847.

A journal article with 2 authors

Strahl BD, Allis CD: The language of covalent histone modifications. Nature 2000, 403:41–45.

A journal article with 3 authors

Pierce SE, Clack JA, Hutchinson JR: Three-dimensional limb joint mobility in the early tetrapod Ichthyostega. Nature 2012, 486:523–526.

A journal article with 11 or more authors

Cook DL, Schwindt PC, Grande LA, Spain WJ: Synaptic depression in the localization of sound. Nature 2003, 421:66–70.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Chappell D: Building Contract Claims. Wiley-Blackwell; 2009.

An edited book

Liberopoulos G, Papadopoulos CT, Tan B, Smith JM, Gershwin SB (Eds): Stochastic Modeling of Manufacturing Systems: Advances in Design, Performance Evaluation, and Control Issues. Springer; 2006.

A chapter in an edited book

Perri R, Carlesimo GA: I deficit cognitivi nelle sindromi extrapiramidali con demenza. In Malattia di Parkinson e parkinsonismi: La prospettiva delle neuroscienze cognitive. Edited by Caltagirone C. Springer; 2009:53–79.

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 Current Opinion in Cell Biology.

Blog post

Andrew D: The Understandable Fear Of Nuclear Weapons Doesn’t Match Reality. 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

Government Accountability Office: Transportation Issue Area: Active Assignments. U.S. Government Printing Office; 1998.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Chatterjee K: A probabilistic mechanistic approach for assessing the rupture frequency of small modular reactor steam generator tubes using uncertain inputs from in-service inspections. 2012,

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

Kishkovsky S: With Orthodoxy’s Revival in Russia, Religious Media Also Rise. New York Times 2008,

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	Current Opinion in Cell Biology
Abbreviation	Curr. Opin. Cell Biol.
ISSN (print)	0955-0674
ISSN (online)	1879-0410
Scope	Cell Biology