How to format your references using the Seminars in Cancer Biology citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Seminars in Cancer 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	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

[1]

H.R. MacDonald, Immunology. T before NK, Science. 296 (2002) 481–482.

A journal article with 2 authors

[1]

L. Le Goff, T. Lecuit, Developmental biology. Gradient scaling and growth, Science. 331 (2011) 1141–1142.

A journal article with 3 authors

[1]

M. Abou Chakra, C. Hilbe, A. Traulsen, Plastic behaviors in hosts promote the emergence of retaliatory parasites, Sci. Rep. 4 (2014) 4251.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

[1]

D.D. Wang, W. Zhou, H. Yan, M. Wong, V. Lee, Personalized prediction of EGFR mutation-induced drug resistance in lung cancer, Sci. Rep. 3 (2013) 2855.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

[1]

S. Fränzle, B. Markert, S. Wünschmann, Introduction to Environmental Engineering, Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim, Germany, 2012.

An edited book

[1]

A. Bondeson, Computational Electromagnetics, Springer, New York, NY, 2005.

A chapter in an edited book

[1]

N. Masuta, M. Yagihashi, H. Narita, H. Fujimoto, A Non-invasive Method to Measure Joint Range of Motion for Hip Joints, in: K. Shirase, S. Aoyagi (Eds.), Service Robotics and Mechatronics: Selected Papers of the International Conference on Machine Automation ICMA2008, Springer, London, 2010: pp. 27–32.

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 Seminars in Cancer Biology.

Blog post

[1]

J. Davis, Woman In The US Dies After Infection From Bacteria Resistant To 26 Antibiotic Drugs, IFLScience. (2017).

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

[1]

Government Accountability Office, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty Broadcast Policies and Practices and the Board for International Broadcasting Oversight of Radio Programming, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC, 1985.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

[1]

C.R. Bagley, Pint-sized spectacles: American youth beauty queens and the power(ful) dynamic of the institutionalized pageant, Doctoral dissertation, George Washington University, 2010.

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

[1]

K. Kelly, Edge or Liability?, New York Times. (2017) B1.

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	Seminars in Cancer Biology
Abbreviation	Semin. Cancer Biol.
ISSN (print)	1044-579X
Scope	Cancer Research

Research and Writing Guides