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

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Journal of Molecular Cell Biology (JMCB). 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

Walker, C. (2014). The fun of science. Science 344, 1314.

A journal article with 2 authors

Li, W., and Walz, J.Y. (2014). Porous nanocomposites with integrated internal domains: application to separation membranes. Sci. Rep. 4, 4418.

A journal article with 3 authors

Rieseberg, L.H. et al. (2006). The nature of plant species. Nature 440, 524–527.

A journal article with 3 or more authors

Smolyaninova, V.N. et al. (2014). Self-assembled tunable photonic hyper-crystals. Sci. Rep. 4, 5706.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Naylor, W. et al. (2008). The Royal Marsden Hospital Handbook of Wound Management in Cancer Care Oxford, UK: Blackwell Science Ltd.

An edited book

W. Greiner (ed) (2013). Exciting Interdisciplinary Physics: Quarks and Gluons / Atomic Nuclei / Relativity and Cosmology / Biological Systems Heidelberg: Springer International Publishing.

A chapter in an edited book

Barden, B. et al. (2015). Postoperative Shoulder Stiffness After Rotator Cuff Repair. In: Shoulder Stiffness: Current Concepts and Concerns, E. Itoi et al. (eds). Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer, 49–73.

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 Cell Biology.

Blog post

Fang, J. (2015). Researcher Stumbles Across Oldest Snake Fossils Ever Found In Museum. IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/four-new-species-identified-oldest-snake-fossils-ever-discovered/.

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 (2000). Aviation Infrastructure: Feasibility of Using Alternate Means to Satisfy Requirements of Alaska National Airspace System Interfacility Communications System (ANICS) Phase II Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Dusso, A.P. (2010). The psychology of institutional development: How parties’ willingness to accept risk affects the districts they draw and the seats they win. Doctoral dissertation. George Washington University.

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

Lee, L. (2008). A New Turn on Old Pots. New York Times F3.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Walker, 2014).
This sentence cites two references (Li and Walz, 2014; Walker, 2014).

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

Two authors: (Li and Walz, 2014)
Three or more authors: (Smolyaninova et al., 2014)

About the journal

Full journal title	Journal of Molecular Cell Biology
Abbreviation	J. Mol. Cell Biol.
ISSN (print)	1674-2788
ISSN (online)	1759-4685
Scope	Cell Biology Genetics Molecular Biology General Medicine