How to format your references using the Molecular Biology Reports citation style

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

Nilsson L (2014) Ph.D.s, come out of the closet! Science 345:706

A journal article with 2 authors

Cassidy LD, Narita M (2015) CELL BIOLOGY. GATA get a hold on senescence. Science 349:1448–1449

A journal article with 3 authors

Mori T, Vale RD, Tomishige M (2007) How kinesin waits between steps. Nature 450:750–754

A journal article with 5 or more authors

Maeda M, Lu S, Shaulsky G, et al (2004) Periodic signaling controlled by an oscillatory circuit that includes protein kinases ERK2 and PKA. Science 304:875–878

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Huddleston R (2010) Android® Fully Loaded. Wiley Publishing, Inc., Hoboken, NJ

An edited book

Ambrose D, Sternberg RJ (2016) Creative Intelligence in the 21st Century: Grappling with Enormous Problems and Huge Opportunities. SensePublishers, Rotterdam

A chapter in an edited book

Loffi JM, Wallace RJ, Harris EL (2015) An Examination of Global Supply Chain Security Through the Lens of Grid and Group Theory. In: Thomas AR, Vaduva S (eds) Global Supply Chain Security: Emerging Topics in Research, Practice and Policy. Springer, New York, NY, pp 69–80

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 Reports.

Blog post

Andrew E (2014) Polymer Blend Conducts Heat Ten Times More Efficiently Than Conventional Plastics. In: IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/chemistry/polymer-blend-conducts-heat-ten-times-more-efficiently-conventional-plastics/. 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 (1997) District of Columbia Public Schools: School Year 1996-97 Enrollment Count Vulnerable to Errors. 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

Hsu Y-T (2017) Input and Uptake in High School EFL Students’ Multiple-Draft Writing Process: A Case Study of a Taiwanese High School EFL Classroom. Doctoral dissertation, Indiana 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

Schwartz J (2017) Students, Cities and States Take the Global Warming Fight to Court. New York Times A11

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 Reports
Abbreviation	Mol. Biol. Rep.
ISSN (print)	0301-4851
ISSN (online)	1573-4978
Scope	Genetics Molecular Biology General Medicine