Which citation style are you using?

Do you by any chance have a link to where Cell specifies the citation requirements? Their documentation at http://www.cell.com/authors#sections is extremely vague.

Furthermore, looking at http://www.cell.com/abstract/S0092-8674(12)01546-2 (open access), the sorting appears somewhat ambiguous.

E.g.
Gilbert, W. (1986). Origin of life: the RNA world. Nature 319, 618.
Gilbert, S.D., Rambo, R.P., Van Tyne, D., and Batey, R.T. (2008). Structure of
the SAM-II riboswitch bound to S-adenosylmethionine. Nat. Struct. Mol. Biol.
15, 177–182.probably means single author before multiple (or ignore first name)

Huang, L., Serganov, A., and Patel, D.J. (2010). Structural insights into ligand
recognition by a sensing domain of the cooperative glycine riboswitch. Mol.
Cell 40, 774–786.
Huang, L., Ishibe-Murakami, S., Patel, D.J., and Serganov, A. (2011). Longrange
pseudoknot interactions dictate the regulatory response in the tetrahydrofolate
riboswitch. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 108, 14801–14806.suggests sorting by first author then year (second author would be out of order)

Lee, E.-J., and Groisman, E.A. (2012). Control of a Salmonella virulence locus
by an ATP-sensing leader messenger RNA. Nature 486, 271–275.
Lee, E.R., Baker, J.L., Weinberg, Z., Sudarsan, N., and Breaker, R.R. (2010). An
allosteric self-splicing ribozyme triggered by a bacterial second messenger.
Science 329, 845–848.suggests that either two authors come before multiple authors or that first names matter.

I'll look around some more, but more guidance from Cell would be helpful

I see.

however changing the style doesnt necessarily change the bibliography either.

I'm not entirely sure what you mean by "does not necessarily". Does it change some times but not others or does it not change your bibliography at all?? If your bibliography does not change after changing styles, try deleting and re-inserting it. Make sure you delete the entire bibliography (select the bibliography plus a line before and a line after if you can).

Since I did start picking at the Cell style already, I'll hijack your thread and finish up.

From http://www.cell.com/abstract/S0092-8674(12)01428-6
Bouvier, T., and Maurice, C.F. (2011). A single-cell analysis of virioplankton
adsorption, infection, and intracellular abundance in different bacterioplankton
physiologic categories. Microb. Ecol. 62, 669–678.
Bouvier, T., Del Giorgio, P.A., and Gasol, J.M. (2007). A comparative study of
the cytometric characteristics of high and low nucleic-acid bacterioplankton
cells from different aquatic ecosystems. Environ. Microbiol. 9, 2050–2066.Two authors do appear to come before 3+

from http://www.cell.com/abstract/S0092-8674(12)01126-9
Schmidt, A., Beck, M., Malmstro¨ m, J., Lam, H., Claassen, M., Campbell, D.,
and Aebersold, R. (2011). Absolute quantification of microbial proteomes at
different states by directed mass spectrometry. Mol. Syst. Biol. 7, 510.
Schmidt, M.W., Houseman, A., Ivanov, A.R., and Wolf, D.A. (2007). Comparative
proteomic and transcriptomic profiling of the fission yeast Schizosaccharomyces
pombe. Mol. Syst. Biol. 3, 79.suggests that first names do matter. Also saw this with two author citations in http://www.cell.com/abstract/S0092-8674(12)00508-9 (see Li)

on the other hand (from http://www.cell.com/abstract/S0092-8674(12)00769-6 )
Gu, W., Shirayama, M., Conte, D., Jr., Vasale, J., Batista, P.J., Claycomb, J.M.,
Moresco, J.J., Youngman, E.M., Keys, J., Stoltz, M.J., et al. (2009). Distinct
argonaute-mediated 22G-RNA pathways direct genome surveillance in the
C. elegans germline. Mol. Cell 36, 231–244.
Gu, S.G., Pak, J., Guang, S., Maniar, J.M., Kennedy, S., and Fire, A. (2012).
Amplification of siRNA in Caenorhabditis elegans generates a transgenerational
sequence-targeted histone H3 lysine 9 methylation footprint. Nat. Genet.
44, 157–164.says otherwise. I suspect that this is a mistake.

from http://www.cell.com/abstract/S0092-8674(12)00936-1
Nasmyth, K. (2011). Cohesin: a catenase with separate entry and exit gates?
Nat. Cell Biol. 13, 1170–1177.
Nasmyth, K., and Schleiffer, A. (2004). From a single double helix to paired
double helices and back. Philos. Trans. R. Soc. Lond. B Biol. Sci. 359, 99–108.Single author before 2 authors

from http://www.cell.com/abstract/S0092-8674(12)00508-9
Crow, Y.J., Leitch, A., Hayward, B.E., Garner, A., Parmar, R., Griffith, E., Ali, M.,
Semple, C., Aicardi, J., Babul-Hirji, R., et al. (2006a). Mutations in genes
encoding ribonuclease H2 subunits cause Aicardi-Goutie` res syndrome and
mimic congenital viral brain infection. Nat. Genet. 38, 910–916.
Crow, Y.J., Hayward, B.E., Parmar, R., Robins, P., Leitch, A., Ali, M., Black,
D.N., van Bokhoven, H., Brunner, H.G., Hamel, B.C., et al. (2006b). Mutations
in the gene encoding the 30-50 DNA exonuclease TREX1 cause Aicardi-Goutie`
res syndrome at the AGS1 locus. Nat. Genet. 38, 917–920.suggests that citations with same first author and year are either sorted by the order in text or by title. Some other citations confirm that it is location in text.

There seems to have been a change in sorting somewhere between 2011 and 2012 (looks like some time after May 11, 2012), since looking back at an article from 2011 ( http://www.cell.com/abstract/S0092-8674(11)01288-8 ), I see
Antonin, W., Fasshauer, D., Becker, S., Jahn, R., and Schneider, T.R. (2002).
Crystal structure of the endosomal SNARE complex reveals common structural
principles of all SNAREs. Nat. Struct. Biol. 9, 107–111.
Antonin, W., Holroyd, C., Tikkanen, R., Honing, S., and Jahn, R. (2000). The RSNARE
endobrevin/VAMP-8 mediates homotypic fusion of early endosomes
and late endosomes. Mol. Biol. Cell 11, 3289–3298.and
Pryor, P.R., Jackson, L., Gray, S.R., Edeling, M.A., Thompson, A., Sanderson,
C.M., Evans, P.R., Owen, D.J., and Luzio, J.P. (2008). Molecular basis for the
sorting of the SNARE VAMP7 into endocytic clathrin-coated vesicles by the
ArfGAP Hrb. Cell 134, 817–827.
Pryor, P.R., Mullock, B.M., Bright, N.A., Lindsay, M.R., Gray, S.R., Richardson,
S.C., Stewart, A., James, D.E., Piper, R.C., and Luzio, J.P. (2004). Combinatorial
SNARE complexes with VAMP7 or VAMP8 define different late endocytic
fusion events. EMBO Rep. 5, 590–595.
i.e. second author has higher precedence than year.

@adamsmith, this would probably be a quick fix for you. Let me know if you don't have time. I'll give it a shot.

Thanks for all of your help thus far. I appreciate it a great deal :)

Thanks, okay so all of the problems with ordering stems from the rules set in place by the particular journal in question.

For instance, using the Journal of Molecular Endocrinology certainly went a long way to fixing some of the problems. However some problems persist such as your previous comment "Edit: Also note that often single author papers are sorted before two author papers, which are sorted before three and more author papers."

But its a start and it has made it work much much better.
I'll have to scourer the nets to find one that suits me.
I went here for the styles http://www.zotero.org/styles

Do you know of a page that has user styles by any chance?

Cheers!

Exactly, I think its like you said before and above, that papers that have a single author vs a paper with multiple authors gets sorted first. Regardless of the date it was published

This is an example directly from the biblography

Fevold HL 1933 The chemical nature of the ovarian and the gonadotropic hormones. Journal of Chemical Education 10 174.

Fevold HL, Hisaw FL & Meyer RK 1930 The relaxative hormone of the corpus luteum. its purification and concentration. Journal of the American Chemical Society 52 3340–3348.

Fevold HL, Hisaw FL & Leonard SL 1932 Hormones of the corpus luteum. the separation and purification of three active substances. Journal of the American Chemical Society 54 254–263.

last time with the previous style it went 1933, 1932, 1930.

The order it has now is precisely how you described it earlier. Just the rules defined by the journal.

So I figure there has to be a compatible journal for what I am after that does the citations and the bibliographic sorting I wish to have.

TBH I didn't think this was a strange request. I figured in terms of referencing for the reader it would be easier to find the reference by author then find it by date, regardless of the number of authors (1, 2, 3 and so on). And since it zotero has user developed styles I didn't think it was impossible...but it doesn't matter, the format that Aurimas recommended is working fine now. Fewer problems than before.

Thanks with all of the help :)

This has done the trick!

Thanks to both of you. It now does the sorting I am after.
Cheers!