How to format your references using the Trends in Cell Biology citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Trends in 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:

PaperpileThe citation style is built in and you can choose it in Settings > Citation Style or Paperpile > Citation Style in Google Docs.
EndNoteDownload the output style file
Mendeley, Zotero, Papers, and othersThe style is either built in or you can download a CSL file that is supported by most references management programs.
BibTeXBibTeX 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.
Ovid’ko, I.A. (2002) Materials science. Deformation of nanostructures. Science 295, 2386
A journal article with 2 authors
1.
Sundquist, W.I. and Ullman, K.S. (2015) CELL BIOLOGY. An ESCRT to seal the envelope. Science 348, 1314–1315
A journal article with 3 authors
1.
Jasny, B.R. et al. (2008) Genetics of behavior. From genes to social behavior. Introduction. Science 322, 891
A journal article with 3 or more authors
1.
Xu, W. et al. (2014) Membranes with well-defined ions transport channels fabricated via solvent-responsive layer-by-layer assembly method for vanadium flow battery. Sci. Rep. 4, 4016

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book
1.
Dudbridge, M. (2016) Handbook of Seal Integrity in the Food Industry, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd
An edited book
1.
Bellatreche, L. and Mota Pinto, F., eds. (2011) Model and Data Engineering: First International Conference, MEDI 2011, Óbidos, Portugal, September 28-30, 2011. Proceedings, 6918, Springer
A chapter in an edited book
1.
Escobar, I. et al. (2011) New Analytical Tools for Evaluation of Spherical Aberration in Optical Microscopy. In Optical Fluorescence Microscopy: From the Spectral to the Nano Dimension (Diaspro, A., ed), pp. 85–99, Springer

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 Trends in Cell Biology.

Blog post
1.
Luntz, S. (2017) Industry-Funded Drug Trials Produce More Positive Findings. IFLScience. [Online]. [Accessed: 30-Oct-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 (1976) HEW’s Refund Policies of Basic Grants and Other Student Aid Programs, U.S. Government Printing Office

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation
1.
Hongxia, D. (2005) Social Process of Environmental Risk Perception, Preferences of Risk Management and Public Participation in Decision Making: A Cross-Cultural Study Between the United States and China. Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University

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.
(nyt), S.K. (2002) World Briefing | Europe: Russia: Cyrillic For AllNew York Times, A8

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 titleTrends in Cell Biology
AbbreviationTrends Cell Biol.
ISSN (print)0962-8924
ISSN (online)1879-3088
ScopeCell Biology

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