How to format your references using the Molecular Cell citation style

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

Gillett, N.P. (2005). Climate modelling: Northern Hemisphere circulation. Nature 437, 496.

A journal article with 2 authors

Hsieh-Wilson, L.C., and Griffin, M.E. (2013). Chemistry. Improving biologic drugs via total chemical synthesis. Science 342, 1332–1333.

A journal article with 3 authors

Loope, D.B., Rowe, C.M., and Joeckel, R.M. (2001). Annual monsoon rains recorded by Jurassic dunes. Nature 412, 64–66.

A journal article with 11 or more authors

Dupont, S., Morsut, L., Aragona, M., Enzo, E., Giulitti, S., Cordenonsi, M., Zanconato, F., Le Digabel, J., Forcato, M., Bicciato, S., et al. (2011). Role of YAP/TAZ in mechanotransduction. Nature 474, 179–183.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Halstead, P. (2014). Two Oxen Ahead (John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.).

An edited book

Catania, B., Ivanović, M., and Thalheim, B. eds. (2010). Advances in Databases and Information Systems: 14th East European Conference, ADBIS 2010, Novi Sad, Serbia, September 20-24, 2010. Proceedings (Springer).

A chapter in an edited book

Marien, H., Steyaert, M., and Heremans, P. (2013). A/D Conversion. In Analog Organic Electronics: Building Blocks for Organic Smart Sensor Systems on Foil, M. Steyaert and P. Heremans, eds. (Springer), pp. 93–109.

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 Cell.

Blog post

Andrew, E. (2015). Baby Sea Turtles Starved Of Oxygen By Beach Microbes. IFLScience.

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 (2006). Space Acquisitions: Improvements Needed in Space Systems Acquisitions and Keys to Achieving Them (U.S. Government Printing Office).

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Randolph, J.L. (2017). A Mixed-Methods Investigation of FMS Shoulder Mobility and Reported Upper Body Injury in Collegiate Football Athletes at a Division II Midwestern University.

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

Eligon, J. (2016). Two of the Best Get a Reward: Each Other. New York Times, D3.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference ².
This sentence cites two references ^2,4.
This sentence cites four references ^2,4,6,8.

About the journal

Full journal title	Molecular Cell
Abbreviation	Mol. Cell
ISSN (print)	1097-2765
ISSN (online)	1097-4164
Scope	Cell Biology Molecular Biology