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. Lakhdar ZB. Global voices of science. Following the light: opening doors to science in Tunisia. Science. 2005;310:1435–7.

A journal article with 2 authors

1. Schink B, Friedrich M. Phosphite oxidation by sulphate reduction. Nature. 2000;406:37.

A journal article with 3 authors

1. Moore GWK, Holdsworth G, Alverson K. Climate change in the North Pacific region over the past three centuries. Nature. 2002;420:401–3.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

1. Cousineau B, Lawrence S, Smith D, Belfort M. Retrotransposition of a bacterial group II intron. Nature. 2000;404:1018–21.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

1. Tagliani M. The Practical Guide to Wall Street. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.; 2009.

An edited book

1. Koehn D, Elm D, editors. Aesthetics and Business Ethics. Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands; 2014.

A chapter in an edited book

1. Mulkidjanian AY. Abiotic Photosynthesis. In: Gargaud M, Amils R, Quintanilla JC, Cleaves HJ (jim), Irvine WM, Pinti DL, et al., editors. Encyclopedia of Astrobiology. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer; 2011. p. 1–3.

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. Carpineti A. Even Computers Find Super Mario Bros. Hard. 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. National Airspace System: Initiatives to Reduce Flight Delays and Enhance Capacity are Ongoing but Challenges Remain. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 2005 May. Report No.: GAO-05-755T.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

1. Miramontes AJ. Examining eye fixation patterns during the Situation Present Assessment Method (SPAM) under varying levels of workload [Doctoral dissertation]. [Long Beach, CA]: California State University, Long Beach; 2017.

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. Cooper M. Michael Tilson Thomas To Step Down in 2020. New York Times. 2017 Oct 31;C3.

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