How to format your references using the Mechanisms of Ageing and Development citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Mechanisms of Ageing and Development. 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

Parman, S.W., 2007. Helium isotopic evidence for episodic mantle melting and crustal growth. Nature 446, 900–903.

A journal article with 2 authors

Deng, X.H., Matsumoto, H., 2001. Rapid magnetic reconnection in the Earth’s magnetosphere mediated by whistler waves. Nature 410, 557–560.

A journal article with 3 authors

Oliveira, E.A., Andrade, J.S., Jr, Makse, H.A., 2014. Large cities are less green. Sci. Rep. 4, 4235.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Fedotov, I.V., Doronina-Amitonova, L.V., Voronin, A.A., Levchenko, A.O., Zibrov, S.A., Sidorov-Biryukov, D.A., Fedotov, A.B., Velichansky, V.L., Zheltikov, A.M., 2014. Electron spin manipulation and readout through an optical fiber. Sci. Rep. 4, 5362.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Hahn, A., Behle, B., Lischewski, D., Rein, W., 2002. Produktionstechnische Praxis. Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim, Germany.

An edited book

Hirsch, F., 2011. Peacocks and Associated Martingales, with Explicit Constructions, B&SS — Bocconi & Springer Series. Springer, Milano.

A chapter in an edited book

Canepa, M., 2013. A Surface Scientist’s View on Spectroscopic Ellipsometry, in: Bracco, G., Holst, B. (Eds.), Surface Science Techniques, Springer Series in Surface Sciences. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, pp. 99–135.

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 Mechanisms of Ageing and Development.

Blog post

Andrews, R., 2016. Hyperfast Spacecraft Could Be Partly Destroyed By Interstellar Dust En Route To Alpha Centauri [WWW Document]. IFLScience. URL (accessed 10.30.18).

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, 2007. Surface Transportation: Strategies Are Available for Making Existing Road Infrastructure Perform Better (No. GAO-07-920). 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

Russo, C.A., 2014. The potential harms of breast cancer screening: estimating the unnecessary surgical diagnosis of benign breast lesions and its impact on quality and cost among insured women younger than 65 years old (Doctoral dissertation). George Washington University, Washington, DC.

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

Cowley, S., 2017. New York Attorney General Opens Inquiry on Student Debt. New York Times B3.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Parman, 2007).
This sentence cites two references (Deng and Matsumoto, 2001; Parman, 2007).

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

Two authors: (Deng and Matsumoto, 2001)
Three or more authors: (Fedotov et al., 2014)

About the journal

Full journal title	Mechanisms of Ageing and Development
Abbreviation	Mech. Ageing Dev.
ISSN (print)	0047-6374
Scope	Ageing Developmental Biology