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

Cyranoski, D. Taiwan: Biotech vision. Nature 421, 672–673 (2003).

A journal article with 2 authors

Scott, S. H. & Crevecoeur, F. Neuroscience: Feedback throttled down for smooth moves. Nature 509, 38–39 (2014).

A journal article with 3 authors

Branco, T., Clark, B. A. & Häusser, M. Dendritic discrimination of temporal input sequences in cortical neurons. Science 329, 1671–1675 (2010).

A journal article with 6 or more authors

Hébert-Dufresne, L., Allard, A., Young, J.-G. & Dubé, L. J. Global efficiency of local immunization on complex networks. Sci. Rep. 3, 2171 (2013).

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Bunker, G. & Thomson, D. Delivering Utility Computing. (John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, Chichester, UK, 2006).

An edited book

Potts, K. Textpattern Solutions: PHP-Based Content Management Made Easy. (Apress, Berkeley, CA, 2007).

A chapter in an edited book

Cloos, P. The Role of Histone Demethylases in Disease. in Epigenetic Aspects of Chronic Diseases (eds. Roach, H. I., Bronner, F. & Oreffo, R. O. C.) 75–93 (Springer, London, 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

Fang, J. New Drug Speeds Up Tissue Regrowth After Transplants. IFLScience https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/new-drug-speeds-tissue-regrowth-after-transplants/ (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. Health Care: Benefits and Barriers to Automated Medical Records. (1994).

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Ruby, C. A. Application of Coastal and Marine Ecological Classification Standard (CMECS) to Remotely Operated Vehicle (Rov) Video Data for Enhanced Geospatial Analysis of Deep Sea Environments. (Mississippi State University, Mississippi State, MS, 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

Kenigsberg, B. The Nuptials Are Set. The Groom? TBD. New York Times C8 (2017).

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