How to format your references using the Molecular Cell citation style

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

Baldauf, S.L. (2003). The deep roots of eukaryotes. Science 300, 1703–1706.

A journal article with 2 authors

Wright, S.I., and Barrett, S.C.H. (2010). Evolution. The long-term benefits of self-rejection. Science 330, 459–460.

A journal article with 3 authors

Cavazzana-Calvo, M., Thrasher, A., and Mavilio, F. (2004). The future of gene therapy. Nature 427, 779–781.

A journal article with 11 or more authors

Caro, G., Bourdon, B., Wood, B.J., and Corgne, A. (2005). Trace-element fractionation in Hadean mantle generated by melt segregation from a magma ocean. Nature 436, 246–249.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Potter, L. (2012). The Life of William Shakespeare (John Wiley & Sons, Ltd).

An edited book

Shafferman, A., Ordentlich, A., and Velan, B. eds. (2010). The Challenge of Highly Pathogenic Microorganisms: Mechanisms of Virulence and Novel Medical Countermeasures (Springer Netherlands).

A chapter in an edited book

Basic, N., Lipovac, V., and Lipovac, A. (2012). Practical Analysis of xDR Based Signaling Network Performance and End-to-End QoS. In Networked Digital Technologies: 4th International Conference, NDT 2012, Dubai, UAE, April 24-26, 2012, Proceedings, Part II Communications in Computer and Information Science., R. Benlamri, ed. (Springer), pp. 34–45.

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 Cell.

Blog post

Hale, T. (2015). Bizarre Flying Saucer Shaped Clouds Spotted Over South Africa. IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/environment/what-were-these-ufo-clouds-spotted-across-south-africa0/.

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 (1998). Year 2000 Computing Crisis: USDA Faces Tremendous Challenges in Ensuring That Vital Public Services Are Not Disrupted (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

Young, J.L. (2010). A community college’s loss of accreditation: A case study.

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

George, N. (2011). New Directors Flesh Out Black America, All of It. New York Times, AR1.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference ².
This sentence cites two references ^2,4.
This sentence cites four references ^2,4,6,8.

About the journal

Full journal title	Molecular Cell
Abbreviation	Mol. Cell
ISSN (print)	1097-2765
ISSN (online)	1097-4164
Scope	Cell Biology Molecular Biology