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

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Molecular and Cellular Pediatrics. 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	Find the style here: output styles overview
Mendeley, Zotero, Papers, and others	The style is either built in or you can download a CSL file that is supported by most reference managers.
BibTeX	BibTeX styles 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

Fisher L (2015) Avoid major disasters by welcoming minor change. Nature 527:9

A journal article with 2 authors

Haussecker D, Kay MA (2015) RNA interference. Drugging RNAi. Science 347:1069–1070

A journal article with 3 authors

van den Ent F, Amos LA, Löwe J (2001) Prokaryotic origin of the actin cytoskeleton. Nature 413:39–44

A journal article with 5 or more authors

Zhu J, Zhang J, Xu H, et al (2014) Pressure-induced reversal between thermal contraction and expansion in ferroelectric PbTiO3. Sci Rep 4:3700

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Cook M (2008) Personnel Selection. Wiley-Blackwell, Oxford, UK

An edited book

Wazer DE, Arthur DW, Vicini FA (2006) Accelerated Partial Breast Irradiation: Techniques and Clinical Implementation. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

A chapter in an edited book

Soto-Oñate D (2015) The Historical Origins of Regional Economic Inequality in Spain: The Cultural Legacy of Political Institutions. In: Schofield N, Caballero G (eds) The Political Economy of Governance: Institutions, Political Performance and Elections. Springer International Publishing, Cham, pp 79–111

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 Pediatrics.

Blog post

Andrew E (2014) Can Zoos Save The World? In: IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/can-zoos-save-world/. Accessed 30 Oct 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 (1974) Expenditures of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration for Public Relations Activities. 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

Macy P (2017) Underachievement in Gifted Students: Understanding Perceptions of Educational Experiences, Attitudes Toward School, and Teacher Training. Doctoral dissertation, Lindenwood 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

Walsh MW (2015) Teamsters Pension Fund Warns 400,000 of Cuts. New York Times B1

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	Molecular and Cellular Pediatrics
Abbreviation	Mol. Cell. Pediatr.
ISSN (online)	2194-7791
Scope