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. Clarke, Physics. Flux qubit completes the hat trick, Science. 299 (2003) 1850–1851.

A journal article with 2 authors

[1]

R.M. Brucker, S.R. Bordenstein, The hologenomic basis of speciation: gut bacteria cause hybrid lethality in the genus Nasonia, Science. 341 (2013) 667–669.

A journal article with 3 authors

[1]

D.M. Post, M.L. Pace, N.G. Hairston Jr, Ecosystem size determines food-chain length in lakes, Nature. 405 (2000) 1047–1049.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

[1]

G. Manzoni, S. Briquet, V. Risco-Castillo, C. Gaultier, S. Topçu, M.L. Ivănescu, J.-F. Franetich, B. Hoareau-Coudert, D. Mazier, O. Silvie, A rapid and robust selection procedure for generating drug-selectable marker-free recombinant malaria parasites, Sci. Rep. 4 (2014) 4760.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

[1]

M. Ramsinghani, The Business of Venture Capital, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ, 2014.

An edited book

[1]

A.C. Lyons, Customer-Driven Supply Chains: From Glass Pipelines to Open Innovation Networks, Springer, London, 2012.

A chapter in an edited book

[1]

J.L. Gustin, A.M. Settles, Seed Phenomics, in: R. Fritsche-Neto, A. Borém (Eds.), Phenomics: How Next-Generation Phenotyping Is Revolutionizing Plant Breeding, Springer International Publishing, Cham, 2015: pp. 67–82.

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]

J. O`Callaghan, Iconic Arecibo Observatory Faces Closure Due To Lack Of Funding, IFLScience. (2017). https://www.iflscience.com/space/iconic-arecibo-observatory-faces-closure-due-to-lack-of-funding/ (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, Additional Cost Transparency and Design Criteria Needed for National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Projects, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC, 2011.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

[1]

J.D. Fisher, A profile of the chief student affairs officers of the California State University system, Doctoral dissertation, Pepperdine University, 2015.

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]

G. Vecsey, Jerry Coleman, 89, Yankee Infielder, Fighter Pilot and Voice of the Padres, New York Times. (2014) A15.

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

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