How to format your references using the Seminars in Cell and Developmental Biology citation style

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

S. Buratowski, Transcription. Gene expression--where to start?, Science 322 (2008) 1804–1805.

A journal article with 2 authors

[1]

S.B. Vafai, V.K. Mootha, Medicine. A common pathway for a rare disease?, Science 342 (2013) 1453–1454.

A journal article with 3 authors

[1]

M. Donoso, A.G.E. Collins, E. Koechlin, Human cognition. Foundations of human reasoning in the prefrontal cortex, Science 344 (2014) 1481–1486.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

[1]

S.F. Sorrells, M.F. Paredes, A. Cebrian-Silla, K. Sandoval, D. Qi, K.W. Kelley, D. James, S. Mayer, J. Chang, K.I. Auguste, E.F. Chang, A.J. Gutierrez, A.R. Kriegstein, G.W. Mathern, M.C. Oldham, E.J. Huang, J.M. Garcia-Verdugo, Z. Yang, A. Alvarez-Buylla, Human hippocampal neurogenesis drops sharply in children to undetectable levels in adults, Nature 555 (2018) 377–381.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

[1]

D. Lindahl, Trump University Commercial Real Estate 101, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ, 2008.

An edited book

[1]

D.B. Brinkman, P.A. Holroyd, J.D. Gardner, eds., Morphology and Evolution of Turtles, Springer Netherlands, Dordrecht, 2013.

A chapter in an edited book

[1]

V. Sweigart, K. Krechmery, Interaction of Performance Measurements, Staffing, and Facility Requirements for the Heart Failure Observation Unit, in: W.F. Peacock (Ed.), Short Stay Management of Acute Heart Failure, Humana Press, Totowa, NJ, 2012: pp. 59–63.

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 Cell and Developmental Biology.

Blog post

[1]

S. Luntz, Lightning Archaeology Measures Bolts’ Power, IFLScience (2016). https://www.iflscience.com/physics/lightning-archaeology-measures-bolts-power/ (accessed October 30, 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

[1]

Government Accountability Office, Head Start Program, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC, 1974.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

[1]

J.N. Oppenheim, Examination of Oncology Summer Camp Attendance, Psychosocial Adjustment, and Perceived Social Support Among Pediatric Cancer Patients and Siblings, Doctoral dissertation, Pepperdine University, 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

[1]

G. Johnson, Feeding the Particle Physics Beast, New York Times (2016) D6.

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 Cell and Developmental Biology
Abbreviation	Semin. Cell Dev. Biol.
ISSN (print)	1084-9521
Scope	Cell Biology Developmental Biology