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Scientific style: Scientific citation

Cell Press/scientific citation style

Journal articles
Information to include

Author(s) Use last name followed by a comma, then first initial followed by a period.
If several authors are involved they should be in the same order they were listed in the article, NOT in alphabetical order. All authors must be included - don't use et al. unless there are more than 10 authors.

Date (in parentheses) followed by a period.

Title of article, followed by a period. Capitalize only the first word in the title. Use italics for species names.

Journal name. Do not use italics for this. Click here for standard journal name abbreviations.

Volume of the journal. Italicize this and follow with a comma. If there is also an issue number, put it within parentheses after the volume number, then follow with a comma.

Pages in the journal. Use the numbers only (don't use a letter p) followed by a period.

Example:
one author

Fire, A. (1991).  Production of Antisense RNA Leads to Effective and Specific Inhibition of Gene Expression in C. elegans  Muscle.  Development 113, 503- 513.

Example:
multiple authors

Berzofsky, J.A., Ahlers, J.D., and Belyakov, I.M. (2001).  Strategies for designing and generating new generation vaccines.  Nat. Rev. Immunol. 1, 209-219.

 
Books
Information to include

Author(s). Use last name followed by a comma, then first initial followed by a period. If several authors are involved they should be in the same order they were listed on the title page.

Publication date, in parentheses, followed by a period.

Title of book, properly capitalized, underlined, and followed by a period.

Publisher, followed by a comma

Publication city, followed by a period.

Pages in the book, if necessary, followed by a period. Use only the numbers.

Example

Watson, J. (1980) The Double Helix: a Personal Account of the Discovery of the Structure of DNA. WW. Norton and Co., New York.

 
Non peer-reviewed sources
 

Scientific writing typically does not reference non peer-reviewed sources or unpublished material, so there is no Cell Press format for websites, general-purpose magazines and journals, or videos. For these types of sources use MLA format. Cell Press format says to refer to unpublished works within the text but not to include them in the references list.

 

More information

Click here for more in-depth information about scientific citation style.

Click here for more information about Cell Press format (scroll down to References).