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

Koen D (2005) Nuts and bolts. Online applications. Nature 433:90

A journal article with 2 authors

Pfisterer AB, Schmid B (2002) Diversity-dependent production can decrease the stability of ecosystem functioning. Nature 416:84–86

A journal article with 3 authors

Samet JM, DeMarini DM, Malling HV (2004) Biomedicine. Do airborne particles induce heritable mutations? Science 304:971–972

A journal article with 5 or more authors

DeLuca TH, Zackrisson O, Gundale MJ, Nilsson M-C (2008) Ecosystem feedbacks and nitrogen fixation in boreal forests. Science 320:1181

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Banks D (2012) An Introduction to Thermogeology: Ground Source Heating and Cooling. Wiley-Blackwell, Oxford, UK

An edited book

Mély Y, Duportail G (eds) (2013) Fluorescent Methods to Study Biological Membranes. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

A chapter in an edited book

Humphrey LR (2013) Model Checking for Verification in UAV Cooperative Control Applications. In: Fahroo F, Wang LY, Yin G (eds) Recent Advances in Research on Unmanned Aerial Vehicles. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, pp 69–117

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

Fang J (2015) Why Do Some Sharks Glow? In: IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/bioluminescent-sharks-glow-sex/. 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 (1995) Denver International Airport: Baggage Handling, Contracting, and Other Issues. 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

Hasan SN (2012) Design and optimization of 2012 Formula SAE chassis with finite element analysis for CSULB. 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

Burghardt LF (2006) The Wit of Gilbert and Sullivan, the Joys of Yiddish. New York Times 14LI8

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Koen 2005).
This sentence cites two references (Pfisterer and Schmid 2002; Koen 2005).

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

Two authors: (Pfisterer and Schmid 2002)
Three or more authors: (DeLuca et al. 2008)

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

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