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

Savage, P.E. (2012). Chemistry. Algae under pressure and in hot water. Science 338, 1039–1040.

A journal article with 2 authors

Wright, S.I., and Barrett, S.C.H. (2010). Evolution. The long-term benefits of self-rejection. Science 330, 459–460.

A journal article with 3 authors

Gordon, A.L., Susanto, R.D., and Vranes, K. (2003). Cool Indonesian throughflow as a consequence of restricted surface layer flow. Nature 425, 824–828.

A journal article with 11 or more authors

LaBella, V.P., Bullock, D.W., Ding, Z., Emery, C., Venkatesan, A., Oliver, W.F., Salamo, G.J., Thibado, P.M., and Mortazavi, M. (2001). Spatially resolved spin-injection probability for gallium arsenide. Science 292, 1518–1521.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Dimond, B. (2008). Legal Aspects of Mental Capacity (Blackwell Publishing Ltd).

An edited book

Sergi, A. (2016). ’Ndrangheta: The Glocal Dimensions of the Most Powerful Italian Mafia A. Lavorgna, ed. (Springer International Publishing).

A chapter in an edited book

Vullo, V., and Vivio, F. (2013). Disk of Uniform Strength. In Rotors: Stress Analysis and Design Mechanical Engineering Series., F. Vivio, ed. (Springer), pp. 89–101.

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). Watch The Annual Beluga Whale Migration LIVE. IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/watch-annual-beluga-whale-migration-canada-here/.

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 (2014). Education of Homeless Students: Improved Program Oversight Needed (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

Arnold, J.K. (2015). An Ecological Model for Health Policy Review: The Integration of New Institutional and Public Choice Theory for Public Policy Assessment.

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

St. John Kelly, E. (2013). Built Inside a Church, A Log Cabin Isn’t Near Its End. Scout’s Honor. New York Times, A20.

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