How to format your references using the EMBO reports citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for EMBO reports. 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 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

Clawson D (2009) Infrastructure. Tenure and the future of the university. Science 324: 1147–1148

A journal article with 2 authors

Orphanides G & Reinberg D (2000) RNA polymerase II elongation through chromatin. Nature 407: 471–475

A journal article with 3 authors

Rowe T, McBride EF & Sereno PC (2001) Dinosaur with a heart of stone. Science 291: 783

A journal article with 11 or more authors

Tio M, Udolph G, Yang X & Chia W (2001) cdc2 links the Drosophila cell cycle and asymmetric division machineries. Nature 409: 1063–1067

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

van der Heide P (2014) Secondary Ion Mass Spectrometry Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

An edited book

Hager MD, van der Zwaag S & Schubert US eds. (2016) Self-healing Materials 1st ed. 2016. Cham: Springer International Publishing

A chapter in an edited book

Mustakova-Possardt E & Oxenberg J (2014) Toward Socially Responsible Clinical Practice Suited to the Needs of a Global Community. In Toward a Socially Responsible Psychology for a Global Era, Mustakova-Possardt E Lyubansky M Basseches M & Oxenberg J (eds) pp 65–90. New York, NY: 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 EMBO reports.

Blog post

Hale T (2016) Fisherman Catches A One-In-Two-Million Blue Lobster For The Second Time. 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 (1978) Use of Minicomputers for Internal Revenue Service Tax Return Preparation Washington, DC: 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

Schroder GL (2015) A quantitative study of critical thinking skills in bachelors of science nursing program students.

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

Downs JS, Loewenstein G & Wisdom J (2009) Eating by the Numbers. New York Times: A31

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Clawson, 2009).
This sentence cites two references (Clawson, 2009; Orphanides & Reinberg, 2000).

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

Two authors: (Orphanides & Reinberg, 2000)
Three or more authors: (Tio et al, 2001)

About the journal

Full journal title	EMBO reports
Abbreviation	EMBO Rep.
ISSN (print)	1469-221X
ISSN (online)	1469-3178
Scope	Biochemistry Genetics Molecular Biology