How to format your references using the Genetics and Molecular Biology citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Genetics and Molecular 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	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

Bulinski JC (2006) Cell biology. Actin discrimination. Science 313:180–181.

A journal article with 2 authors

Rickaby REM and Halloran P (2005) Cool La Niña during the warmth of the Pliocene? Science 307:1948–1952.

A journal article with 3 authors

Bennett MJ, Lebrón JA and Bjorkman PJ (2000) Crystal structure of the hereditary haemochromatosis protein HFE complexed with transferrin receptor. Nature 403:46–53.

A journal article with 11 or more authors

Um S, Fraimout A, Sapountzis P, Oh D-C and Poulsen M (2013) The fungus-growing termite Macrotermes natalensis harbors bacillaene-producing Bacillus sp. that inhibit potentially antagonistic fungi. Sci Rep 3:3250.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Barrett-Lennard GT (2014) The Relationship Inventory. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, Chichester, UK

An edited book

Amara A, Ea T and Belleville M (2010) Emerging Technologies and Circuits. Springer Netherlands, Dordrecht

A chapter in an edited book

Choi MK-T and Chan K-B (2013) The Beginning of the Chasing Game. In: Chan K-B (ed) Online Dating as A Strategic Game: Why and How Men in Hong Kong Use QQ to Chase Women in Mainland China. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, pp 95–114

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 Genetics and Molecular Biology.

Blog post

Andrews R (2017) NASA Picks Groin Airlock As Winner Of Space Poop Competition. In: IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/space/nasa-groin-airlock-winner-space-poop-competition/. 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 (1988) Private Enterprise, Public Responsibilities. 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

Hernandez AN (2017) Connecting the Community: A Grant Proposal. Doctoral dissertation, California State University, Long Beach

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

Brantley B (2016) A Floury Farce Leavened With Kitchen-Sink Realism in a Poignant Look at Breadmakers. New York Times C1.

In-text citations

References should be cited in the text by name and year in parentheses:

This sentence cites one reference (Bulinski 2006).
This sentence cites two references (Rickaby and Halloran 2005; Bulinski 2006).

Here are examples of in-text citations with multiple authors:

Two authors: (Rickaby and Halloran 2005)
Three or more authors: (Um et al. 2013)

About the journal

Full journal title	Genetics and Molecular Biology
Abbreviation	Genet. Mol. Biol.
ISSN (print)	1415-4757
ISSN (online)	1678-4685
Scope	Genetics Molecular Biology