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

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

Triendl R. 2002. Attractive forces in Asia. Nature 418:4–5.

A journal article with 2 authors

Pimm SL, Brown JH. 2004. Ecology. Domains of diversity. Science 304:831–833.

A journal article with 3 authors

Eggleton PP, Dearborn DSP, Lattanzio JC. 2006. Deep mixing of 3He: reconciling Big Bang and stellar nucleosynthesis. Science 314:1580–1583.

A journal article with 11 or more authors

Hua Y, Zhu M, Wang Y, Xie Z, Li M. 2014. A hybrid method for identification of structural domains. Sci. Rep. 4:7476.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Malpass DB. 2010. Introduction to Industrial Polyethylene. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

An edited book

Snyder C. 2005. Pro PHP Security. (Southwell M, editor.). Berkeley, CA: Apress

A chapter in an edited book

Ruet J. 2014. Indian Firms in World Production: The State, Markets, and Innovation. In: Richet X, Delteil V, Dieuaide P, editors. Strategies of Multinational Corporations and Social Regulations: European and Asian Perspectives. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer. p. 77–91.

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 Biology and Evolution.

Blog post

Andrew E. 2015. Mutant Red-Fanged Funnel-Web Spider Discovered. IFLScience [Internet]. Available from: https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/blood-red-funnel-web-spider-discovered/

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. Status of the Mariner Jupiter/Saturn 1977 Project. 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

Cox DC. 2008. A measurement of the neutral current neutrino-nucleon elastic cross section at MiniBooNE.

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

Otis J. 2017. Student Gains Confidence With Help From an ‘Angel.’ New York Times:A20.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Triendl 2002).
This sentence cites two references (Triendl 2002; Pimm and Brown 2004).

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

Two authors: (Pimm and Brown 2004)
Three or more authors: (Hua et al. 2014)

About the journal

Full journal title	Molecular Biology and Evolution
Abbreviation	Mol. Biol. Evol.
ISSN (print)	0737-4038
ISSN (online)	1537-1719
Scope	Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics Genetics Molecular Biology