How to format your references using the Mechanisms of Ageing and Development citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Mechanisms of Ageing and Development. 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

Berg, P., 2008. Meetings that changed the world: Asilomar 1975: DNA modification secured. Nature 455, 290–291.

A journal article with 2 authors

Li, A., Yong, X., 2014. Entanglement guarantees emergence of cooperation in quantum prisoner’s dilemma games on networks. Sci. Rep. 4, 6286.

A journal article with 3 authors

Furey, M.L., Pietrini, P., Haxby, J.V., 2000. Cholinergic enhancement and increased selectivity of perceptual processing during working memory. Science 290, 2315–2319.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Forkey, J.N., Quinlan, M.E., Shaw, M.A., Corrie, J.E.T., Goldman, Y.E., 2003. Three-dimensional structural dynamics of myosin V by single-molecule fluorescence polarization. Nature 422, 399–404.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Kobilinsky, L., Liotti, T.F., Oeser-Sweat, J., 2004. DNA: Forensic and Legal Applications. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ.

An edited book

Christensen, S.H., Didier, C., Jamison, A., Meganck, M., Mitcham, C., Newberry, B. (Eds.), 2015. International Perspectives on Engineering Education: Engineering Education and Practice in Context, Volume 1, Philosophy of Engineering and Technology. Springer International Publishing, Cham.

A chapter in an edited book

Li, X., Gao, S., 2012. Effects of Sea Surface Temperature, in: Gao, S. (Ed.), Precipitation Modeling and Quantitative Analysis. Springer Netherlands, Dordrecht, pp. 111–124.

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 Mechanisms of Ageing and Development.

Blog post

Andrew, E., 2015. New CT Reveals Inner Structures of Body in Exquisite Detail [WWW Document]. IFLScience. URL (accessed 10.30.18).

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, 1977. Construction of Space Shuttle Facilities at Vandenberg Air Force Base (No. B-183134). 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

Munn, J.E., 2017. Information Technology Certification Training Implementation: Exploratory Case Study of Air Force and Civilian Leaders Experiences (Doctoral dissertation). University of Phoenix, Phoenix, AZ.

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

Johnson, G., 2015. Science, Lost in a Legal Maze. New York Times D3.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Berg, 2008).
This sentence cites two references (Berg, 2008; Li and Yong, 2014).

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

Two authors: (Li and Yong, 2014)
Three or more authors: (Forkey et al., 2003)

About the journal

Full journal title	Mechanisms of Ageing and Development
Abbreviation	Mech. Ageing Dev.
ISSN (print)	0047-6374
Scope	Ageing Developmental Biology