How to format your references using the Molecular Cancer Research citation style

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

van der Hart HW. Physics. When does photoemission begin? Science. 2010;328:1645–6.

A journal article with 2 authors

Casanova J-L, Abel L. Primary immunodeficiencies: a field in its infancy. Science. 2007;317:617–9.

A journal article with 3 authors

Paniagua-Domínguez R, Abujetas DR, Sánchez-Gil JA. Ultra low-loss, isotropic optical negative-index metamaterial based on hybrid metal-semiconductor nanowires. Sci Rep. 2013;3:1507.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Lee DY, Shin CY, Yoon SJ, Lee HY, Lee W, Shrestha NK, et al. Enhanced photovoltaic performance of Cu-based metal-organic frameworks sensitized solar cell by addition of carbon nanotubes. Sci Rep. 2014;4:3930.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

McMaster MC. Buying and Selling Laboratory Instruments. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.; 2010.

An edited book

Caires L, Italiano GF, Monteiro L, Palamidessi C, Yung M, editors. Automata, Languages and Programming: 32nd International Colloquium, ICALP 2005, Lisbon, Portugal, July 11-15, 2005. Proceedings. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer; 2005.

A chapter in an edited book

Srivastava A, Klassen EP. Shapes of Planar Curves. In: Klassen EP, editor. Functional and Shape Data Analysis. New York, NY: Springer; 2016. page 125–65.

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 Research.

Blog post

Fang J. Songbirds Can Sense Impending Storms [Internet]. IFLScience. IFLScience; 2014 [cited 2018 Oct 30]. Available from: https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/songbirds-can-sense-impending-storms-and-skedaddle/

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. Public Schools: Insufficient Research to Determine Effectiveness of Selected Private Education Companies. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 2002 Oct. Report No.: GAO-03-11.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Qin R. Mid -ocean ridge morphology and tectonics: Insights from numerical modeling of faults and dikes [Doctoral dissertation]. [New York, NY]: Columbia University; 2008.

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

Nir SM. Doctor Storms Bronx Hospital In Fatal Attack. New York Times. 2017;A1.

In-text citations

References should be cited in the text by sequential numbers in parentheses:

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 Research
Abbreviation	Mol. Cancer Res.
ISSN (print)	1541-7786
ISSN (online)	1557-3125
Scope	Cancer Research Molecular Biology Oncology