How to format your references using the The EMBO Journal citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for The EMBO Journal. 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

Dance A (2015) Neuroscience: Connectomes make the map. Nature 526: 147–149

A journal article with 2 authors

Courseaux A & Nahon JL (2001) Birth of two chimeric genes in the Hominidae lineage. Science 291: 1293–1297

A journal article with 3 authors

Liu Z, Neff RA & Berg DK (2006) Sequential interplay of nicotinic and GABAergic signaling guides neuronal development. Science 314: 1610–1613

A journal article with 11 or more authors

Scanlan CN, Offer J, Zitzmann N & Dwek RA (2007) Exploiting the defensive sugars of HIV-1 for drug and vaccine design. Nature 446: 1038–1045

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Donald IW (2010) Waste Immobilization in Glass and Ceramic Based Hosts Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd

An edited book

Chibbaro S (2014) Reductionism, Emergence and Levels of Reality: The Importance of Being Borderline Rondoni L & Vulpiani A (eds) Cham: Springer International Publishing

A chapter in an edited book

Hofbauer GFL & Bachmann CC (2015) Advances in Our Understanding of Immunosuppression as a Risk Factor for Cutaneous SCC: Evidence for Revision of Immunosuppressive Therapy. In Advances in Transplant Dermatology: Clinical and Practical Implications, Zwald F & Brown MD (eds) pp 47–58. Cham: Springer International Publishing

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 The EMBO Journal.

Blog post

Andrew D (2016) This Photo Of Someone’s Shiny Legs Is An Illusion, And We’re Freaking Out. IFLScience

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 (1993) Educational Achievement Standards: NAGB’s Approach Yields Misleading Interpretations 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

Klyce LR (2008) Assessing parent-child agreement on an eating disorder symptom questionnaire.

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

Seelye KQ, Blinder A & Bidgood J (2017) Counterprotesters Surge Into Boston, Overshadowing a Planned Rally. New York Times: A13

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Dance, 2015).
This sentence cites two references (Dance, 2015; Courseaux & Nahon, 2001).

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

Two authors: (Courseaux & Nahon, 2001)
Three or more authors: (Scanlan et al, 2007)

About the journal

Full journal title	The EMBO Journal
Abbreviation	EMBO J.
ISSN (print)	0261-4189
ISSN (online)	1460-2075
Scope	General Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology Molecular Biology General Immunology and Microbiology General Neuroscience