How to format your references using the International Journal of Molecular Sciences citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for International Journal of Molecular Sciences. 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

Holdsworth, R.E. Planetary Science. Weak Faults--Rotten Cores. Science 2004, 303, 181–182.

A journal article with 2 authors

Williams, S.R.; Stuart, G.J. Dependence of EPSP Efficacy on Synapse Location in Neocortical Pyramidal Neurons. Science 2002, 295, 1907–1910.

A journal article with 3 authors

Sawamura, H.; Shima, K.; Tanji, J. Numerical Representation for Action in the Parietal Cortex of the Monkey. Nature 2002, 415, 918–922.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Shin, S.-Y.; Choi, J.M.; Seo, J.; Ahn, H.-W.; Choi, Y.G.; Cheong, B.-K.; Lee, S. The Effect of Doping Sb on the Electronic Structure and the Device Characteristics of Ovonic Threshold Switches Based on Ge-Se. Sci. Rep. 2014, 4, 7099.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Sugirtharajah, R.S. Exploring Postcolonial Biblical Criticism; Wiley-Blackwell: Oxford, UK, 2011; ISBN 9781444396652.

An edited book

PRICAI 2014: Trends in Artificial Intelligence: 13th Pacific Rim International Conference on Artificial Intelligence, Gold Coast, QLD, Australia, December 1-5, 2014. Proceedings; Pham, D.-N., Park, S.-B., Eds.; Lecture Notes in Computer Science; Springer International Publishing: Cham, 2014; Vol. 8862; ISBN 9783319135595.

A chapter in an edited book

Bu, T.-M. Adwords Pricing. In Encyclopedia of Algorithms; Kao, M.-Y., Ed.; Springer US: Boston, MA, 2008; pp. 7–9 ISBN 9780387307701.

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 International Journal of Molecular Sciences.

Blog post

Hamilton, K. Why Do Our Friends Want Us To Drink And Dislike It When We Don’t? (accessed on 30 October 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

Government Accountability Office Critical Infrastructure Protection: Comprehensive Strategy Can Draw on Year 2000 Experiences; U.S. Government Printing Office: Washington, DC, 1999;

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Fetterolf-Klein, S. Teacher Leadership Practices, Supports and Challenges in Implementation of the Common Core High School Math Standards. Doctoral dissertation, Pepperdine University: Malibu, CA, 2015.

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

Detrick, B. Following a Giant’s Flamin’ Hot Footsteps. New York Times 2017, ST8.

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	International Journal of Molecular Sciences
Abbreviation	Int. J. Mol. Sci.
ISSN (online)	1422-0067
Scope	Molecular Biology Catalysis Inorganic Chemistry Organic Chemistry Physical and Theoretical Chemistry Spectroscopy Computer Science Applications General Medicine