How to format your references using the Molecular Biology citation style

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

Parthasarathi A. 2003. India: A champion of new technologies. Nature. 422, 17–8.

A journal article with 2 authors

Dibner C., Schibler U. 2015. METABOLISM. A pancreatic clock times insulin release. Science. 350, 628–9.

A journal article with 3 authors

Khudiyev T., Huseyinoglu E., Bayindir M. 2014. Non-resonant Mie scattering: emergent optical properties of core-shell polymer nanowires. Sci. Rep. 4, 4607.

A journal article with 10 or more authors

Eathiraj S., Pan X., Ritacco C., Lambright D.G. 2005. Structural basis of family-wide Rab GTPase recognition by rabenosyn-5. Nature. 436, 415–9.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Mainardi R.L. 2011. Harnessing the Power of Continuous Auditing. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. .

An edited book

Rogers J.A., Ghaffari R., Kim D.-H. 2016. Stretchable Bioelectronics for Medical Devices and Systems. Cham: Springer International Publishing. .

A chapter in an edited book

Li L., Liu Y., Hausheer D., Stiller B. 2009. Design and Evaluation of a Combinatorial Double Auction for Resource Allocations in Grids. In: Network Economics for Next Generation Networks: 6th International Workshop on Internet Charging and Qos Technologies, ICQT 2009, Aachen, Germany, May 11-15, 2009. Proceedings. Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Eds P. Reichl, B. Stiller, B. Tuffin. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer, pp. 36–47.

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.

Blog post

Carpineti A. 2016. Young Stars Might Help Make Organic Molecules. https://www.iflscience.com/space/young-stars-might-help-make-organic-molecules/.

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. 1982. Improper Use of Federal Student Aid Funds for Lobbying Activities. 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

Whitesides V.J. 2017. The Large Ensemble/European Classical Music Paradigm and African American-Originated Dance-Musicking: A Dispositival Analysis of U.S. Secondary Music Education. Doctoral dissertation Washington, DC: George Washington 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

Rothenberg B. 2017. Skipping the French Open Is a Strategy That Fits a Unique Player. New York Times. B7.

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 Biology
ISSN (print)	0026-8933
ISSN (online)	1608-3245
Scope