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

Kreeger, K. (2003). Location, location, location. Nature 421, 766–767.

A journal article with 2 authors

Gilmore, M.S., and Ferretti, J.J. (2003). Microbiology. The thin line between gut commensal and pathogen. Science 299, 1999–2002.

A journal article with 3 authors

Nielsen, H. et al. (2005). An mRNA is capped by a 2’, 5’ lariat catalyzed by a group I-like ribozyme. Science 309, 1584–1587.

A journal article with 3 or more authors

Caputo, A. et al. (2008). TMEM16A, a membrane protein associated with calcium-dependent chloride channel activity. Science 322, 590–594.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Raju, K.S.N. (2011). Fluid Mechanics, Heat Transfer, and Mass Transfer Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

An edited book

H.-W. Vohr (ed) (2016). Encyclopedia of Immunotoxicology Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer.

A chapter in an edited book

Specht, E.J. et al. (2015). Pasch Geometry (PSH). In: Euclidean Geometry and Its Subgeometries, H.T. Jones et al. (eds). Cham: Springer International Publishing, 79–138.

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

Carpineti, A. (2017). Astronomers Spot Closest Star In Orbit Around A Black Hole. IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/space/astronomers-spot-closest-star-in-orbit-around-a-black-hole/.

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 (1992). Superfund: EPA Needs to Better Focus Cleanup Technology Development 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

Tsai, H.-Y. (2006). Elucidating the Role of Protein Cofactors in RNA Catalysis Using Ribonuclease P as the Model System. Doctoral dissertation. Ohio State 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

Drucker, J. et al. (2017). Trump’s Family Still Benefiting From Businesses. New York Times A1.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Kreeger, 2003).
This sentence cites two references (Gilmore and Ferretti, 2003; Kreeger, 2003).

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

Two authors: (Gilmore and Ferretti, 2003)
Three or more authors: (Caputo et al., 2008)

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