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. Young L. Photonics: A stable narrow-band X-ray laser. Nature. 2015;524:424–5.

A journal article with 2 authors

1. Inamdar AA, Bennett JW. A common fungal volatile organic compound induces a nitric oxide mediated inflammatory response in Drosophila melanogaster. Sci Rep. 2014;4:3833.

A journal article with 3 authors

1. Friis EM, Pedersen KR, Crane PR. Fossil evidence of water lilies (Nymphaeales) in the Early Cretaceous. Nature. 2001;410:357–60.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

1. Yaveroğlu ÖN, Malod-Dognin N, Davis D, Levnajic Z, Janjic V, Karapandza R, et al. Revealing the hidden language of complex networks. Sci Rep. 2014;4:4547.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

1. Good PI. Introduction to Statistics Through Resampling Methods and R. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.; 2013.

An edited book

1. He Q. Absolute Clauses in English from the Systemic Functional Perspective: A Corpus-Based Study. Yang B, editor. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer; 2015.

A chapter in an edited book

1. Holdaway S. Surface Survey: Method and Strategies. In: Carver M, Gaydarska B, Montón-Subías S, editors. Field Archaeology from Around the World: Ideas and Approaches. Cham: Springer International Publishing; 2015. p. 27–32.

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. Andrew E. Our Star Trek-Style Skin-Healing Technology Could Be The End Of Chronic Wounds. IFLScience. IFLScience; 2015.

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. Commercial Space Launches: FAA Needs Continued Planning and Monitoring to Oversee the Safety of the Emerging Space Tourism Industry. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 2006 Oct. Report No.: GAO-07-16.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

1. Estrin JL. Sitting in the Fire: An Exploration of Soul-Making in Prison [Doctoral dissertation]. [Carpinteria, CA]: Pacifica Graduate Institute; 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. Wagner J. Returning for Friendship, and Drums. New York Times. 2017 Mar 11;SP3.

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

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