How to format your references using the Molecular and Cellular Biology citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Molecular and Cellular Biology (MCB). 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

Hoag H. 2007. Northern exposure for EMBL. Nature 447:504.

A journal article with 2 authors

Shekhawat GS, Dravid VP. 2005. Nanoscale imaging of buried structures via scanning near-field ultrasound holography. Science 310:89–92.

A journal article with 3 authors

Hsieh C-S, Kovářík J, Logan T. 2014. How central are clients in sexual networks created by commercial sex? Sci Rep 4:7540.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Di Toro G, Hirose T, Nielsen S, Pennacchioni G, Shimamoto T. 2006. Natural and experimental evidence of melt lubrication of faults during earthquakes. Science 311:647–649.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Devolder P, Janssen J, Manca R. 2012. Stochastic Methods for Pension Funds. John Wiley & Sons, Inc, Hoboken, NJ.

An edited book

2012. Through White Noise: Autonarrative Exploration of Racism, Discrimination, and the Doorways to Academic Citizenship in Canada. SensePublishers, Rotterdam.

A chapter in an edited book

Chiong R, Kirley M. 2009. Co-evolutionary Learning in the N-player Iterated Prisoner’s Dilemma with a Structured Environment, p. 32–42. In Korb, K, Randall, M, Hendtlass, T (eds.), Artificial Life: Borrowing from Biology: 4th Australian Conference, ACAL 2009, Melbourne, Australia, December 1-4, 2009. Proceedings. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg.

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 Molecular and Cellular Biology.

Blog post

Andrew E. 2015. The MESSENGER Spacecraft Has Crashed Into Mercury. IFLScience. IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/space/final-salute-space-hero-messenger-it-crashes-mercury/. Retrieved 30 October 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

Government Accountability Office. 1987. National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s Planned Use of Information Technology for the Space Station. T-IMTEC-87-5. 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

Roettger ME. 2008. Three essays on social inequality and the U.S. criminal justice system. Doctoral dissertation. University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC.

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

Kelly M. 2001. Politically Charged Graffiti Treats Spears as a Symptom, Not a Star. New York Times.

In-text citations

References should be cited in the text by sequential numbers in parentheses:

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	Molecular and Cellular Biology
Abbreviation	Mol. Cell. Biol.
ISSN (print)	0270-7306
ISSN (online)	1098-5549
Scope	Cell Biology Molecular Biology