Cell Citation

Reference Style (cell-citation)

When to trigger

• References are numbered by appearance (Science/Nature style) and must become author–date.
• The reference list is ordered by citation order instead of alphabetically.
• Author lists are truncated with "et al." in the bibliography.
• You are porting a manuscript from a numbered-style journal to Cell.

Cell Press citation mechanics

• In-text: author–date. Parenthetical "(Smith et al., 2021)" or narrative "Smith et al. (2021) showed…". Multiple: "(Smith et al., 2021; Lee and Cho, 2020)". Two authors: "(Lee and Cho, 2020)". Same author/year: "(Smith et al., 2021a, 2021b)".
• Reference list: alphabetical by first author's surname — NOT numbered, NOT by order of appearance.
• Full author lists in the bibliography (Cell Press does not truncate to "et al." for typical author counts; confirm the cutoff).
• Journal names per Cell Press style (often spelled out / standard form); include year, volume, and pages/article number.
• A single reference list covering main text and STAR Methods.

This is the opposite of Science, which uses numbered references in order of appearance. If you are transferring from Science (or Nature's numbered convention), you must re-cite in author–date and re-sort alphabetically — a mechanical but non-trivial conversion.

Reference formats (shape)

• Journal article: Author, A.B., Author, C.D., and Author, E.F. (2021). Title of the article. Journal Name Volume, pages.
• Book: Author, A.B. (2020). Book Title, edition (Publisher).
• Chapter: Author, A.B. (2020). Chapter title. In Book Title, C.D. Editor, ed. (Publisher), pp. xx–yy.
• Dataset/code: cite with repository, accession/DOI, and year (consistent with cell-data).
• Preprint: include the server (e.g., bioRxiv) and DOI.

Surname precedes initials in the list; "and" before the final author; year in parentheses after the author list. Use a Cell Press CSL/style file to enforce this.

Common conversion fixes (numbered → Cell author–date)

Worked conversion (numbered → Cell author–date)

A Science-style sentence and its list entry:

Loss of XYZ1 expands the stem pool (7). 7. A. B. Smith, C. D. Lee, E. F. Wong, Cell 180, 233–247 (2020).

Converted to Cell Press style, the in-text marker becomes the name-year token and the entry moves into the single alphabetical list with surname-first initials, full author list, spelled-out journal, and the year in parentheses after the authors:

Loss of XYZ1 expands the stem pool (Smith et al., 2020). Smith, A.B., Lee, C.D., and Wong, E.F. (2020). Title of the article. Cell 180, 233–247.

Note the mechanical traps this exposes: initials flip to follow the surname, "and" precedes the final author, the citation-order number is discarded entirely, and the entry re-sorts by "S" rather than by where it first appeared. Do all of these in one pass or the list and the in-text markers drift out of sync.

STAR Methods and the single list

Cell uses one reference list for the whole paper, including citations that appear only in STAR Methods (protocols, algorithms, prior reagents). Do not build a separate methods bibliography. A common failure when porting from a journal that footnotes methods is orphaned method citations that never made it into the alphabetical list — sweep the STAR Methods text for name-year tokens and confirm each resolves. Software and datasets cited in the Key Resources Table follow cell-data conventions (repository, accession/DOI, version) rather than the journal-article shape.

Tooling

• Use Zotero/EndNote with the Cell Press CSL/style; do a final manual pass on author-list completeness and journal-name form (managers often truncate).
• Verify every in-text "(Author, year)" has a matching alphabetical entry, and that a/b suffixes disambiguate same-author/year citations.
• Watch narrative vs. parenthetical placement: "Smith et al. (2020) showed…" keeps only the year in parentheses, while a parenthetical cite wraps both name and year — reference managers frequently mangle the narrative form on conversion.

Output format

【Style detected】 numbered-by-appearance / Nature / other → Cell author–date
【In-text】 author–date "(Smith et al., 2021)"? yes/no
【List order】 alphabetical by first author? yes/no
【Author lists】 full (not et al.) in biblio? surname-first? yes/no
【Same-author/year】 a/b suffixes applied? yes/no
【Unresolved citations】 [...]
【Next】 cell-submission

Anti-patterns

• Do not leave numbered "(12)" citations anywhere in a Cell manuscript.
• Do not order the reference list by appearance — Cell is alphabetical.
• Do not truncate author lists with "et al." in the bibliography.
• Do not copy Science's numbered convention by reflex — Cell is author–date.

Confirm the exact author–date format, author-list cutoff, and journal-name style against current Cell Press author guidelines.

Source: brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills → Cell-Skills/skills/cell-citation/SKILL.md