How to format your references using the Molecular Cancer Research citation style

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

Bunk S. Better microscopes will be instrumental in nanotechnology development. Nature. 2001;410:127–9.

A journal article with 2 authors

Ransohoff RM, Cardona AE. The myeloid cells of the central nervous system parenchyma. Nature. 2010;468:253–62.

A journal article with 3 authors

Murakami S, Nagaosa N, Zhang S-C. Dissipationless quantum spin current at room temperature. Science. 2003;301:1348–51.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Schofield L, Hewitt MC, Evans K, Siomos M-A, Seeberger PH. Synthetic GPI as a candidate anti-toxic vaccine in a model of malaria. Nature. 2002;418:785–9.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Heiberger RM. Computation for the Analysis of Designed Experiments. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.; 2015.

An edited book

Chakrabarti A, Sharma N, Balas VE, editors. Advances in Computing Applications. Singapore: Springer; 2016.

A chapter in an edited book

Sz.-Nagy B, Bercovici H, Foias C, Kérchy L. Operator-Valued Analytic Functions. In: Foias C, Bercovici H, Kérchy L, editors. Harmonic Analysis of Operators on Hilbert Space. New York, NY: Springer; 2010. page 189–241.

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 Cancer Research.

Blog post

Luntz S. Cosmic Winds Shape Dust Clouds At Galactic Edge. IFLScience. IFLScience; 2015.

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. Highway Projects: Some Federal and State Practices to Expedite Completion Show Promise. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 2012 Jun. Report No.: GAO-12-593.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Grace-McCaskey CA. Fishermen, Politics, and Participation: An Ethnographic Examination of Commercial Fisheries Management in St. Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands [Doctoral dissertation]. [Tampa, FL]: University of South Florida; 2012.

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

Robles F. Police Officers Are Haunted by Grisly Scene Inside Orlando Club. New York Times. 2016;A17.

In-text citations

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

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 Cancer Research
Abbreviation	Mol. Cancer Res.
ISSN (print)	1541-7786
ISSN (online)	1557-3125
Scope	Cancer Research Molecular Biology Oncology