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

Starr, C. Powerful reactions. Nature 406, 679 (2000).

A journal article with 2 authors

Sander, P. M. & Klein, N. Developmental plasticity in the life history of a prosauropod dinosaur. Science 310, 1800–1802 (2005).

A journal article with 3 authors

Elf, J., Li, G.-W. & Xie, X. S. Probing transcription factor dynamics at the single-molecule level in a living cell. Science 316, 1191–1194 (2007).

A journal article with 6 or more authors

Lau, N. C. et al. Characterization of the piRNA complex from rat testes. Science 313, 363–367 (2006).

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Sabol, S. Case Studies in Mechanical Engineering. (John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, 2016).

An edited book

Agricultural Implications of the Fukushima Nuclear Accident. (Springer Japan, 2013).

A chapter in an edited book

Adachi, N. & Akanuma, N. Delusions and Hallucinations. in Neuropsychiatric Symptoms of Epilepsy (ed. Mula, M.) 69–89 (Springer International Publishing, 2016).

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. Will We All Be Eating Insects In 50 Years? IFLScience (2014).

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. The Education of the New Public Executive. (1978).

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Frey, E. F. Technology diffusion and environmental regulation: Evidence from electric power plants under the Clean Air Act. (George Washington University, 2008).

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

Cooper, M. A Case That Reverberates In Inkblot-Like Districts. New York Times A15 (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

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