How to format your references using the Molecular Biology citation style

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

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

Offerman S.E. 2004. Materials science. Microstructures in 4D. Science. 305, 190–1.

A journal article with 2 authors

Swinnen J., Squicciarini P. 2012. Global food supply. Mixed messages on prices and food security. Science. 335, 405–6.

A journal article with 3 authors

Roditi H.A., Fisher N.S., Sañudo-Wilhelmy S.A. 2000. Uptake of dissolved organic carbon and trace elements by zebra mussels. Nature. 407, 78–80.

A journal article with 10 or more authors

Peterson B.J., Holmes R.M., McClelland J.W., Vörösmarty C.J., Lammers R.B., Shiklomanov A.I., Shiklomanov I.A., Rahmstorf S. 2002. Increasing river discharge to the Arctic Ocean. Science. 298, 2171–3.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Blanchet G., Charbit M. 2015. Digital Signal and Image Processing Using MATLAB®. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. .

An edited book

Balzer K. 2013. Nonequilibrium Green’s Functions Approach to Inhomogeneous Systems. vol. 867. Ed M. Bonitz. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer. .

A chapter in an edited book

Kim K.-R., Kim D.-H., Kim H.-J. 2013. Magnetic Resonance Wireless Power Transmission Using a LLC Resonant Circuit for a Locomotion Robot’s Battery Charging. In: Intelligent Robotics and Applications: 6th International Conference, ICIRA 2013, Busan, South Korea, September 25-28, 2013, Proceedings, Part I. Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Eds J. Lee, M.C. Lee, H. Liu, J.-H. Ryu. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer, pp. 31–7.

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 Molecular Biology.

Blog post

Andrews R. 2015. Crows Fear And Learn From Death. https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/murder-crows-learns-death/.

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. 2012. Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics Education: Survey of Federal Programs (GAO-12-110SP, January 2012), an E-supplement to GAO-12-108. 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

Van Vlack K.A. 2012. Puaxant tuvip: Powerlands Southern Paiute cultural landscapes and pilgrimage trails. Doctoral dissertation Tucson, AZ: University of Arizona.

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. 2016. Syndergaard Stumbles en Route to a Potential Wild-Card Start. New York Times. B11.

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	Molecular Biology
ISSN (print)	0026-8933
ISSN (online)	1608-3245
Scope