How to format your references using the Molecular Genetics and Genomics citation style

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

Thomas PJ (2011) Cell signaling. Every bit counts. Science 334:321–322

A journal article with 2 authors

Huey RB, Ward PD (2005) Hypoxia, global warming, and terrestrial late Permian extinctions. Science 308:398–401

A journal article with 3 authors

Lin G, Xu N, Xi R (2008) Paracrine Wingless signalling controls self-renewal of Drosophila intestinal stem cells. Nature 455:1119–1123

A journal article with 5 or more authors

Groffen AJ, Martens S, Díez Arazola R, et al (2010) Doc2b is a high-affinity Ca2+ sensor for spontaneous neurotransmitter release. Science 327:1614–1618

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Kissell J (2009) Mac® Security Bible. Wiley Publishing, Inc., Indianapolis, IN, USA

An edited book

Gomes DA (2016) Regularity Theory for Mean-Field Game Systems. Springer International Publishing, Cham

A chapter in an edited book

Anton M, Castellani O, Guérin-Dubiard C (2007) Phosvitin. In: Huopalahti R, López-Fandiño R, Anton M, Schade R (eds) Bioactive Egg Compounds. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, pp 17–24

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 Genetics and Genomics.

Blog post

Andrew E (2015) Why Do Spiders Curl Up When They Die? In: IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/why-do-spiders-curl-when-they-die/. Accessed 30 Oct 2018

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 (1993) European Transportation. U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Castiglione A (2010) Counterproductive work behaviors: The role of employee support policies, envy, and narcissism. Doctoral dissertation, California State University, Long Beach

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

Steinhauer J (2017) Wounded Lawmaker Is Baseball Fan With ‘Soft-Glove Approach’ in House. New York Times A16

In-text citations

References should be cited in the text by name and year in parentheses:

This sentence cites one reference (Thomas 2011).
This sentence cites two references (Huey and Ward 2005; Thomas 2011).

Here are examples of in-text citations with multiple authors:

Two authors: (Huey and Ward 2005)
Three or more authors: (Groffen et al. 2010)

About the journal

Full journal title	Molecular Genetics and Genomics
Abbreviation	Mol. Genet. Genomics
ISSN (print)	1617-4615
ISSN (online)	1617-4623
Scope	Genetics Molecular Biology General Medicine