How to format your references using the Nature Reviews Molecular Cell Biology citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Nature Reviews Molecular Cell Biology. 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	Find the style here: output styles overview
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

Simmons, R. Sense and sensibility. Nature 411, 243 (2001).

A journal article with 2 authors

Mathews, J. A. & Tan, H. Economics: Manufacture renewables to build energy security. Nature 513, 166–168 (2014).

A journal article with 3 authors

Tersoff, J., Jesson, D. E. & Tang, W. X. Running droplets of gallium from evaporation of gallium arsenide. Science 324, 236–238 (2009).

A journal article with 6 or more authors

Alonso, M. C. et al. An ATP gate controls tubulin binding by the tethered head of kinesin-1. Science 316, 120–123 (2007).

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Riches, J. Galatians Through the Centuries. (Blackwell Publishing Ltd, Oxford, 2008).

An edited book

The SAGES Manual of Strategic Decision Making: Case Studies in Minimal Access Surgery. (Springer, New York, NY, 2008).

A chapter in an edited book

Thurner, S. A Simple General Model of Evolutionary Dynamics. in Principles of Evolution: From the Planck Epoch to Complex Multicellular Life (eds. Meyer-Ortmanns, H. & Thurner, S.) 119–144 (Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, 2011).

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 Nature Reviews Molecular Cell Biology.

Blog post

Andrew, E. Scientists Trace The Origins Of The Last Two HIV-1 Groups. IFLScience (2015).

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. Transportation Infrastructure: Major Program Revisions Present Challenges. (1992).

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Watson, K. L. Putting together the pieces of a social cognition deficit: A retrospective case study. (California State University, Long Beach, Long Beach, CA, 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

Novick, S. M. At an 85-Year-Old Summer Retreat, a Makeover. New York Times LI8 (2014).

In-text citations

References should be cited in the text by sequential numbers in superscript:

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	Nature Reviews Molecular Cell Biology
Abbreviation	Nat. Rev. Mol. Cell Biol.
ISSN (print)	1471-0072
ISSN (online)	1471-0080
Scope	Cell Biology Molecular Biology