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:

PaperpileThe citation style is built in and you can choose it in Settings > Citation Style or Paperpile > Citation Style in Google Docs.
EndNoteFind the style here: output styles overview
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
Anglin J (2000) Why trapped atoms are attractive. Nature 406:29–30.
A journal article with 2 authors
Monsonego A and Weiner HL (2003) Immunotherapeutic approaches to Alzheimer’s disease. Science 302:834–838.
A journal article with 3 authors
Li C, Zhang T and Goldman DI (2013) A terradynamics of legged locomotion on granular media. Science 339:1408–1412.
A journal article with 11 or more authors
Nateri AS, Riera-Sans L, Da Costa C and Behrens A (2004) The ubiquitin ligase SCFFbw7 antagonizes apoptotic JNK signaling. Science 303:1374–1378.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book
Linder B (2004) Thermodynamics and Introductory Statistical Mechanics. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ
An edited book
Bernard A (2011) Global Product Development: Proceedings of the 20th CIRP Design Conference, Ecole Centrale de Nantes, Nantes, France, 19th-21st April 2010. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
A chapter in an edited book
Carlberg C and Molnár F (2014) Linking Signal Transduction and Gene Regulation. In: Molnár F (ed) Mechanisms of Gene Regulation. Springer Netherlands, Dordrecht, pp 71–89

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
Hale T (2016) The Face Of Scottish King Robert The Bruce Has Been Digitally Reconstructed. In: IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/editors-blog/the-face-of-scottish-king-robert-the-bruce-has-been-digitally-reconstructed/. 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 (1978) Review of NASA’s Solicitation for the Leasing of Office Space in the Houston, Texas, Area. 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
Dobson EC (2012) Elizabeth C. Dobson Consulting and Design: A business plan for aging-in-place resources. 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
Choi MHK (2015) LaCroix Sparkling Water. New York Times MM28.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Anglin 2000).
This sentence cites two references (Anglin 2000; Monsonego and Weiner 2003).

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

  • Two authors: (Monsonego and Weiner 2003)
  • Three or more authors: (Nateri et al. 2004)

About the journal

Full journal titleGenetics and Molecular Biology
AbbreviationGenet. Mol. Biol.
ISSN (print)1415-4757
ISSN (online)1678-4685
ScopeGenetics
Molecular Biology

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