How to format your references using the Molecular Biology of the Cell citation style

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

Savage, N (2014). Bioinformatics: Big data versus the big C. Nature 509, S66-7.

A journal article with 2 authors

Matthews, HD, and Solomon, S (2013). Atmosphere. Irreversible does not mean unavoidable. Science 340, 438–439.

A journal article with 3 authors

Schott, D, Yanai, I, and Hunter, CP (2014). Natural RNA interference directs a heritable response to the environment. Sci Rep 4, 7387.

A journal article with 11 or more authors

Wang, W, Zhang, W, Gu, J, Liu, Q, Deng, T, Zhang, D, and Lin, H-Q (2013). Design of a structure with low incident and viewing angle dependence inspired by Morpho butterflies. Sci Rep 3, 3427.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Halloran, M, and Thies, C (2012). The Social Media Handbook for Financial Advisors, Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

An edited book

Li, F (2011). Euclidean Shortest Paths: Exact or Approximate Algorithms, London: Springer.

A chapter in an edited book

Smith, AS, Birnie, AK, and French, JA (2013). Prenatal Androgens Affect Development and Behavior in Primates. In: Building Babies: Primate Development in Proximate and Ultimate Perspective, ed. KBH Clancy, K Hinde, and JN Rutherford, New York, NY: Springer, 103–131.

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 of the Cell.

Blog post

Andrew, E (2015). Driverless Cars Will Change The Way We Think Of Car Ownership. IFLScience. Available at: https://www.iflscience.com/technology/driverless-cars-will-change-way-we-think-car-ownership/. 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

Government Accountability Office (2004). Information Technology: FAA Has Many Investment Management Capabilities in Place, but More Oversight of Operational Systems Is Needed, 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

McLean, MR (2010). Analyzing the relationship of geographic mobility and institutional prestige to career advancement of women in academic medicine pursuing midcareer-, senior-, or executive-level administrative positions: Implications for career advancement strategies. Doctoral dissertation. 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

Shpigel, B (2017). Steelers Prevail With Six Field Goals and One Relentless Running Back. New York Times, D2.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Savage, 2014).
This sentence cites two references (Matthews and Solomon, 2013; Savage, 2014).

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

Two authors: (Matthews and Solomon, 2013)
Three or more authors: (Wang et al., 2013)

About the journal

Full journal title	Molecular Biology of the Cell
Abbreviation	Mol. Biol. Cell
ISSN (print)	1059-1524
ISSN (online)	1939-4586
Scope	Cell Biology Molecular Biology