How to format your references using the The Journal of Cell Biology citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for The Journal of 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	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

Müller, R.D. 2011. Earth science: plate motion and mantle plumes. Nature. 475:40–41.

A journal article with 2 authors

Kalinin, S.V., and N.A. Spaldin. 2013. Materials science. Functional ion defects in transition metal oxides. Science. 341:858–859.

A journal article with 3 authors

Mori, M.X., M.G. Erickson, and D.T. Yue. 2004. Functional stoichiometry and local enrichment of calmodulin interacting with Ca2+ channels. Science. 304:432–435.

A journal article with 99 or more authors

Nagalakshmi, U., Z. Wang, K. Waern, C. Shou, D. Raha, M. Gerstein, and M. Snyder. 2008. The transcriptional landscape of the yeast genome defined by RNA sequencing. Science. 320:1344–1349.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

DeRosa, D.F. 2013. Foreign Exchange Operations. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ.

An edited book

Mackness, B., M. Mackness, M. Aviram, and G. Paragh eds. . 2008. The Paraoxonases: Their Role in Disease Development and Xenobiotic Metabolism. 6. Springer Netherlands, Dordrecht. XV, 325 p pp.

A chapter in an edited book

Jimenez-Villar, E., V. Mestre, and G.F. De Sá. 2016. High Performance in Random Laser Using a Colloidal Suspension of TiO2@Silica Nanoparticles. In Photoptics 2014: Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Photonics, Optics and Laser Technology Revised Selected Papers. P.A. Ribeiro and M. Raposo, editors. Springer International Publishing, Cham. 39–49.

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 The Journal of Cell Biology.

Blog post

Andrew, E. 2014. Common Painkillers Could Decrease Skin Cancer Risk. IFLScience.

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. 1989. Tank Recovery Vehicle: Status of Program Acquisition and Full-Scale Engineering Development. U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Chellamuthu, V.K. 2015. Structured Population Models: Numerical Methods and Application to Frogs Infected with Chytridiomycosis. University of Louisiana, Lafayette, LA.

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

Thrush, G., and D. Itzkoff. 2017. After Star Turn, Spicer Says He Regrets Berating Press Over Inauguration Crowds. New York Times. A17.

In-text citations

References should be cited in the text by name and year in parentheses:

This sentence cites one reference (Müller, 2011).
This sentence cites two references (Müller, 2011; Kalinin and Spaldin, 2013).

Here are examples of in-text citations with multiple authors:

Two authors: (Kalinin and Spaldin, 2013)
Three or more authors: (Nagalakshmi et al., 2008)

About the journal

Full journal title	The Journal of Cell Biology
Abbreviation	J. Cell Biol.
ISSN (print)	0021-9525
ISSN (online)	1540-8140
Scope	Cell Biology