How to format your references using the Molecular Cancer citation style

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

1. Nathan C. Points of control in inflammation. Nature. 2002;420:846–52.

A journal article with 2 authors

1. Chinsamy A, Elzanowski A. Bone histology. Evolution of growth pattern in birds. Nature. 2001;412:402–3.

A journal article with 3 authors

1. Weng J-K, Philippe RN, Noel JP. The rise of chemodiversity in plants. Science. 2012;336:1667–70.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

1. Karp EM, Eaton TR, Sànchez I Nogué V, Vorotnikov V, Biddy MJ, Tan ECD, et al. Renewable acrylonitrile production. Science. 2017;358:1307–10.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

1. Heuer A. Der perfekte Tipp. Weinheim, Germany: Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA; 2012.

An edited book

1. Zhao W, Prenat G, editors. Spintronics-based Computing. Cham: Springer International Publishing; 2015.

A chapter in an edited book

1. Lal A, Qadeer S. Reachability Modulo Theories. In: Abdulla PA, Potapov I, editors. Reachability Problems: 7th International Workshop, RP 2013, Uppsala, Sweden, September 24-26, 2013 Proceedings. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer; 2013. p. 23–44.

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 Cancer.

Blog post

1. Fang J. Male Fiddler Crabs Use Vibrations To Lure Females Into Burrows. IFLScience. IFLScience; 2016.

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

1. Government Accountability Office. Repayment of Overpaid Cash-in-Lieu-of-Commodities Funds to Louisiana Youth Talent Promotion, Inc. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 1981 Oct. Report No.: CED-82-8.

Theses and dissertations

Theses including Ph.D. dissertations, Master's theses or Bachelor theses follow the basic format outlined below.

Doctoral dissertation

1. Moreau EL. Sailing on a Sea of Hope: Exploring the Impact of Federal Consolidation on Individual Identification and Organizational Identity [Doctoral dissertation]. [Washington, DC]: George Washington University; 2014.

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

1. Etheredge P by G. Voyeur | 7 Train. New York Times. 2016 Nov 4;RE15.

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 Cancer
Abbreviation	Mol. Cancer
ISSN (online)	1476-4598
Scope	Cancer Research Molecular Medicine Oncology