How to format your references using the Molecules citation style

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

Morgan, J.A. Ecology. Looking beneath the Surface. Science 2002, 298, 1903–1904.

A journal article with 2 authors

Barnes, W.; Sambles, R. Physics. Only Skin Deep. Science 2004, 305, 785–786.

A journal article with 3 authors

Gawronski, H.; Mehlhorn, M.; Morgenstern, K. Imaging Phonon Excitation with Atomic Resolution. Science 2008, 319, 930–933.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

McElroy, K.; Simmonds, R.W.; Hoffman, J.E.; Lee, D.-H.; Orenstein, J.; Eisaki, H.; Uchida, S.; Davis, J.C. Relating Atomic-Scale Electronic Phenomena to Wave-like Quasiparticle States in Superconducting Bi2Sr2CaCu2O8+delta. Nature 2003, 422, 592–596.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Walke, B.; Seidenberg, R.; Althoff, M.P. UMTS; John Wiley & Sons, Ltd: Chichester, UK, 2005; ISBN 9780470014141.

An edited book

Digital Watermarking: 5th International Workshop, IWDW 2006, Jeju Island, Korea, November 8-10, 2006. Proceedings; Shi, Y.Q., Jeon, B., Eds.; Lecture Notes in Computer Science; Springer: Berlin, Heidelberg, 2006; Vol. 4283; ISBN 9783540488255.

A chapter in an edited book

Vukotic, A.; Goodwill, J. Persistent Sessions. In Apache Tomcat 7; Goodwill, J., Ed.; Apress: Berkeley, CA, 2011; pp. 95–118 ISBN 9781430237235.

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 Molecules.

Blog post

Evans, K. 22 Signs You Might Be A Narcissist Available online: https://www.iflscience.com/brain/22-signs-you-might-be-a-narcissist/ (accessed on 30 October 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 Need for Improved Management and Increased Sharing of Computer Resources at the San Antonio Data Services Center; U.S. Government Printing Office: Washington, DC, 1980;

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Othmanawny, G. Soaked and Unsoaked Performance of Crushed Gravel and Limestone Aggregates. Doctoral dissertation, Southern Illinois University: Edwardsville, IL, 2017.

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

Feeney, K. Irish Inspiration; French Twists. New York Times 2010, NJ16.

In-text citations

References should be cited in the text by sequential numbers in square brackets:

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	Molecules
Abbreviation	Molecules
ISSN (online)	1420-3049
Scope	Organic Chemistry

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