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

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Molecular and Cellular Probes. 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

[1]

M. Schlosshauer, Lifting the fog from the north, Nature. 453 (2008) 39.

A journal article with 2 authors

[1]

Z. Zhou, Y. Bai, Structural biology: analysis of protein-folding cooperativity, Nature. 445 (2007) E16-7; discussion E17-8.

A journal article with 3 authors

[1]

G.J. Tattersall, D.V. Andrade, A.S. Abe, Heat exchange from the toucan bill reveals a controllable vascular thermal radiator, Science. 325 (2009) 468–470.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

[1]

M.J. Bunders, J.L. van Hamme, M.H. Jansen, K. Boer, N.A. Kootstra, T.W. Kuijpers, Fetal exposure to HIV-1 alters chemokine receptor expression by CD4+T cells and increases susceptibility to HIV-1, Sci. Rep. 4 (2014) 6690.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

[1]

M. Mesterton-Gibbons, A Concrete Approach to Mathematical Modelling, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ, 2007.

An edited book

[1]

S. Leitner, F. Wall, eds., Artificial Economics and Self Organization: Agent-Based Approaches to Economics and Social Systems, Springer International Publishing, Cham, 2014.

A chapter in an edited book

[1]

R. Bahadur, W.B. Samuels, Wastewater Critical Infrastructure Security and Protection, in: R.M. Clark, S. Hakim, A. Ostfeld (Eds.), Handbook of Water and Wastewater Systems Protection, Springer, New York, NY, 2011: pp. 87–102.

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 Probes.

Blog post

[1]

E. Andrew, Transparent Mice Allow Incredible Anatomical Views, IFLScience. (2014). https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/transparent-mice-allow-incredible-anatomical-views/ (accessed October 30, 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

[1]

Government Accountability Office, Transportation Services: Better Dissemination and Oversight of DOT’s Guidance Could Lead to Improved Access for Limited English-Proficient Populations (Korean Version), U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC, 2005.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

[1]

D. Lizarraga, Effects of large inedible particles on the feeding performance of echinodem larvae, Doctoral dissertation, California State University, Long Beach, 2017.

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

[1]

D. Acosta, F. Robles, Month After a Storm, Puerto Rico Awaits Power, New York Times. (2017) A1.

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 Probes
Abbreviation	Mol. Cell. Probes
ISSN (print)	0890-8508
Scope	Cell Biology Molecular Biology