How to format your references using the Cell Reports Methods citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Cell Reports Methods. 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 reference managers.
BibTeX	BibTeX styles 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

Liu, Z. (2011). Atmospheric science. Glacial cycles and Indian monsoon--a southern push. Science 333, 706–708.

A journal article with 2 authors

Beghein, C., and Trampert, J. (2003). Robust normal mode constraints on inner-core anisotropy from model space search. Science 299, 552–555.

A journal article with 3 authors

Hillebrandt, H., Friston, K.J., and Blakemore, S.-J. (2014). Effective connectivity during animacy perception--dynamic causal modelling of Human Connectome Project data. Sci. Rep. 4, 6240.

A journal article with 11 or more authors

Mangold, N., Quantin, C., Ansan, V., Delacourt, C., and Allemand, P. (2004). Evidence for precipitation on Mars from dendritic valleys in the Valles Marineris area. Science 305, 78–81.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Banks, D. (2012). An Introduction to Thermogeology: Ground Source Heating and Cooling (Wiley-Blackwell).

An edited book

Shishkov, B. ed. (2016). Business Modeling and Software Design: 5th International Symposium, BMSD 2015, Milan, Italy, July 6–8, 2015, Revised Selected Papers (Springer International Publishing).

A chapter in an edited book

Balogh, K. (2015). F-LTAG Semantics for Issues Around Focusing. In Logic, Language, and Computation: 10th International Tbilisi Symposium on Logic, Language, and Computation, TbiLLC 2013, Gudauri, Georgia, September 23-27, 2013. Revised Selected Papers Lecture Notes in Computer Science., M. Aher, D. Hole, E. Jeřábek, and C. Kupke, eds. (Springer), pp. 61–81.

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 Cell Reports Methods.

Blog post

Fang, J. (2015). Electric Eels Use Their High-Voltage Zaps To Both Stun And Track Prey. IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/electric-eels-use-their-high-voltage-zaps-both-track-and-stun-prey/.

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 (1990). Observations on H.R. 3774, “The Aging Aircraft Safety Act of 1989” (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

McFarland-Mancini, M. (2006). Prolactin Production by Human Breast Adipose Tissue and Adipocytes.

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

Wagner, J. (2017). Mets Sign Six, Including deGrom, Harvey and Familia; Flores Waits for More. New York Times, D6.

In-text citations

References should be cited in the text by sequential numbers in superscript:

This sentence cites one reference ².
This sentence cites two references ^2,4.
This sentence cites four references ^2,4,6,8.

About the journal

Full journal title	Cell Reports Methods
ISSN (online)	2667-2375
Scope