How to format your references using the Journal of Molecular Biology citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Journal of 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	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

[1]

J.F. Bunnett, How much does one vote count in an election?, Science 290 (2000) 1895b.

A journal article with 2 authors

[1]

J.E. Yack, J.H. Fullard, Ultrasonic hearing in nocturnal butterflies, Nature 403 (2000) 265–266.

A journal article with 3 authors

[1]

F.H. Do-Monte, K. Quiñones-Laracuente, G.J. Quirk, A temporal shift in the circuits mediating retrieval of fear memory, Nature 519 (2015) 460–463.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

[1]

A. McMahon, W. Supatto, S.E. Fraser, A. Stathopoulos, Dynamic analyses of Drosophila gastrulation provide insights into collective cell migration, Science 322 (2008) 1546–1550.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

[1]

A.F.D. Mackenzie, Places of Possibility, Blackwell Publishing Ltd, Oxford, UK, 2013.

An edited book

[1]

G. Reiter, G.R. Strobl, eds., Progress in Understanding of Polymer Crystallization, Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, 2007.

A chapter in an edited book

[1]

J.J. McGonagle, C.M. Vella, Figuring Out What You Really Need to Know, in: C.M. Vella (Ed.), Proactive Intelligence: The Successful Executive’s Guide to Intelligence, Springer, London, 2012: pp. 41–52.

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 Journal of Molecular Biology.

Blog post

[1]

E. Andrew, How To Reach Zero Net Greenhouse Gas Emissions In Three Steps, IFLScience (2015). https://www.iflscience.com/environment/how-reach-zero-net-greenhouse-gas-emissions-three-steps/ (accessed October 30, 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

[1]

Government Accountability Office, General Government Information Systems Issue Area: Active Assignments, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC, 1996.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

[1]

E.J. Kelly, What experiences create and nurture a love of science?, Doctoral dissertation, California State University, Long Beach, 2016.

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

[1]

R. Kelly, “Have One Hard Cry. Then Stanch the Grief.,” New York Times (1994) 79.

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	Journal of Molecular Biology
Abbreviation	J. Mol. Biol.
ISSN (print)	0022-2836
Scope	Molecular Biology