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

Rylance R. Grant giving: Global funders to focus on interdisciplinarity. Nature. 2015;525:313–5.

A journal article with 2 authors

Makinoshima H, Glickman MS. Regulation of Mycobacterium tuberculosis cell envelope composition and virulence by intramembrane proteolysis. Nature. 2005;436:406–9.

A journal article with 3 authors

Hellweger FL, van Sebille E, Fredrick ND. Biogeographic patterns in ocean microbes emerge in a neutral agent-based model. Science. 2014;345:1346–9.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Anderson JD, Schubert G, Jacobson RA, Lau EL, Moore WB, Palguta JL. Discovery of mass anomalies on Ganymede. Science. 2004;305:989–91.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Furmston M. Powell-Smith & Furmston’s Building Contract Casebook. Oxford, UK: Blackwell Publishing; 2008.

An edited book

Maciaszek LA, Filipe J, editors. Evaluation of Novel Approaches to Software Engineering: 7th International Conference, ENASE 2012, Warsaw, Poland, June 29-30, 2012, Revised Selected Papers. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer; 2013.

A chapter in an edited book

Petri BG, Watts RJ, Tsitonaki A, Crimi M, Thomson NR, Teel AL. Fundamentals of ISCO Using Persulfate. In: Siegrist RL, Crimi M, Simpkin TJ, editors. In Situ Chemical Oxidation for Groundwater Remediation. New York, NY: Springer; 2011. page 147–91.

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

Luntz S. Extinct Rodents Of Unusual Size Discovered In Timor [Internet]. IFLScience. IFLScience; 2015 [cited 2018 Oct 30]. Available from: https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/extinct-rats-unusual-size-discovered-timor0/

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 Transportation: Survey of Project Sponsors on Their Transit Projects and Experience with the Federal Transit Administration’s New Starts and Small Starts Programs (GAO-07-927SP, July 2007), an E-supplement to GAO-07-917. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 2007 Jul. Report No.: GAO-07-927SP.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

McCahill TP. Teacher perceptions of response to intervention for English learners [Doctoral dissertation]. [Boca Raton, FL]: Florida Atlantic 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

Shear MD. An Unusual Place for a President’s Family on a Foreign Trip: Center Stage. New York Times. 2017;A6.

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

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