How to format your references using the Molecular Endocrinology citation style

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

Vermeij G. EVOLUTION. How Victoria’s fishes were knocked from their perch. Science 2015;350(6264):1038.

A journal article with 2 authors

Yea SS, Fruman DA. Cell signaling. New mTOR targets Grb attention. Science 2011;332(6035):1270–1271.

A journal article with 3 authors

Reiner JW, Walker FJ, Ahn CH. Materials science. Atomically engineered oxide interfaces. Science 2009;323(5917):1018–1019.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Mills MM, Ridame C, Davey M, La Roche J, Geider RJ. Iron and phosphorus co-limit nitrogen fixation in the eastern tropical North Atlantic. Nature 2004;429(6989):292–294.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Anderson JB. Bandwidth Efficient Coding. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.; 2017.

An edited book

Jacobs MHG. Equilibrium Between Phases of Matter: Supplemental Text for Materials Science and High-Pressure Geophysics. (Oonk HAJ, ed.). Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands; 2012.

A chapter in an edited book

Araki F. Quality Assurance (QA). In: Nagata Y, ed. Stereotactic Body Radiation Therapy: Principles and Practices. Tokyo: Springer Japan; 2015:59–71.

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 Endocrinology.

Blog post

Carpineti A. An Underground Instrument Will Measure How Much Earth Drags Spacetime. IFLScience 2017.

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. Accessible Communications: FCC Should Evaluate the Effectiveness of Its Public Outreach Efforts. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 2015.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Magner KA. Evaluation of admissions criteria and practices with regards to successful online learning styles and characteristics. 2010.

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

Mackay IP. Dogwood at Valley Forge. New York Times. May 7, 1935:BOOKS ART22.

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 Endocrinology
Abbreviation	Mol. Endocrinol.
ISSN (print)	0888-8809
ISSN (online)	1944-9917
Scope	Endocrinology Molecular Biology General Medicine