How to format your references using the Molecular Biotechnology citation style

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

Johns-Krull, C. M. (2014). Astrophysics: Secret ingredient exposed. Nature, 514(7524), 571–572.

A journal article with 2 authors

Deuker, M. M., & McMahon, M. (2014). Cancer biology: Enzyme meets a surprise target. Nature, 510(7504), 225–226.

A journal article with 3 authors

Katz, R. F., Spiegelman, M., & Holtzman, B. (2006). The dynamics of melt and shear localization in partially molten aggregates. Nature, 442(7103), 676–679.

A journal article with 8 or more authors

Lim, B., Jiang, M., Camargo, P. H. C., Cho, E. C., Tao, J., Lu, X., … Xia, Y. (2009). Pd-Pt bimetallic nanodendrites with high activity for oxygen reduction. Science (New York, N.Y.), 324(5932), 1302–1305.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Vincoli, J. W. (2014). Basic Guide to System Safety. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

An edited book

Srinivasulu, C. (2012). South Asian Mammals: Their Diversity, Distribution, and Status. (B. Srinivasulu, Ed.). New York, NY: Springer.

A chapter in an edited book

Shavitt, Y., & Zilberman, N. (2013). Internet PoP Level Maps. In E. Biersack, C. Callegari, & M. Matijasevic (Eds.), Data Traffic Monitoring and Analysis: From Measurement, Classification, and Anomaly Detection to Quality of Experience (pp. 82–103). Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer.

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 Biotechnology.

Blog post

O`Callaghan, J. (2015, October 5). You Can Now View More Than 10,000 High-Res Photos From The Apollo Missions. IFLScience. IFLScience. Retrieved October 30, 2018, from https://www.iflscience.com/space/you-can-now-view-8400-high-res-photos-apollo-missions/

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. (1995). Higher Education: Selected Information on Student Financial Aid Received by Legal Immigrants (No. HEHS-96-7). 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

Edwards, J. W. (2006). The Relation Between Expressed Emotion and Adolescent Psychopathology (Doctoral dissertation). Ohio State University, Columbus, OH.

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

Kelly, M. (1992, September 28). THE 1992 CAMPAIGN: The Democrats; Clinton Uses Farm Speech to Begin New Offensive. New York Times, p. A13.

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 Biotechnology
Abbreviation	Mol. Biotechnol.
ISSN (print)	1073-6085
ISSN (online)	1559-0305
Scope	Biochemistry Biotechnology Molecular Biology Bioengineering Applied Microbiology and Biotechnology