Style Error: Molecular Systems Biology

bheavner
At the moment, Molecular Systems Biology appears to just use the Nature Journal Style. However, though published by the nature publishing group, MSB uses a different style. See http://www.nature.com/msb/authors/index.html#a3.4.5

Currently, with word integration, citations appear as superscripts. However, "in the text of the manuscript, a reference should be cited by author and year of publication; no more than two authors may be cited per reference; ‘et al’ should be used if there are more than two authors (i.e. Smith & Jones, 2003; Smith et al, 2000)."

There may be other differences, but I'm not familiar enough with the styles to know them all.
  • adamsmith
    hmm - if someone could find out more about the style that'd be great. I can do the coding, but otherwise the same as for a style request applies:
    http://www.zotero.org/support/requesting_styles
  • bheavner
    Awesome. What more needs to be known about the style than the information in the link I posted? I posted a Style Error instead of Style Request since there is a Molecular Systems Biology style in the repository, but it is incorrect in that it uses superscripts in Word instead of "In the text of the manuscript, a reference should be cited by author and year of publication; no more than two authors may be cited per reference; ‘et al’ should be used if there are more than two authors (i.e. Smith & Jones, 2003; Smith et al, 2000)."
  • adamsmith
    right - but I'd expect the style to be different in other ways, too, no?
  • bheavner
    Most likely. Here's what Nature says in their author guide (http://www.nature.com/nature/authors/gta/#a5.4 ) - this is what I assume the Nature Journal style (and thus MSB) currently do:

    • References are each numbered, ordered sequentially as they appear in the text, methods summary, tables, boxes, figure legends, online-only methods.

    • When cited in the text, reference numbers are superscript, not in brackets unless they are likely to be confused with a superscript number.

    • All authors should be included in reference lists unless there are more than five, in which case only the first author should be given, followed by ‘et al.’.

    • Authors should be listed surname first, followed by a comma and initials of given names.
    • Titles of all cited articles are required. Titles of articles cited in reference lists should be in upright, not italic text; the first word of the title is capitalized, the title written exactly as it appears in the work cited, ending with a full stop. Book titles are italic with all main words capitalized. Journal titles are italic and abbreviated according to common usage. Volume numbers are bold. The publisher and city of publication are required for books cited. (Refer to published papers in Nature for details.)

    • References to web-only journals should give authors, article title and journal name as above, followed by URL in full - or DOI if known - and the year of publication in parentheses.

    • References to websites should give authors if known, title of cited page, URL in full, and year of posting in parentheses.
    In contrast, here's what MSB requires:

    • In the text of the manuscript, a reference should be cited by author and year of publication; no more than two authors may be cited per reference; ‘et al’ should be used if there are more than two authors (i.e. Smith & Jones, 2003; Smith et al, 2000).

    • In the reference list, citations should be listed in alphabetical order and then chronologically, with the authors’ surnames and initials inverted;

    • where there are more than 20 authors on a paper, the first 20 will be listed, followed by ‘et al.’.

    • Publications by the same author(s) in the same year should be identified with a, b, c after the year of publication.

    • The name of each journal should be abbreviated according to Index Medicus and italicized.

      References should therefore be listed (and will subsequently appear in print) as follows:

      Akhmedkhanov A, Toniolo P, Zeleniuch-Jacquotte A, Koenig KL, Shore RE (2002) Aspirin and lung cancer in women. Br J Cancer 87: 49-53

    • Book chapters and books can be cited in the following way:

      Price SR, Oubridge C, Varani G, Nagai K (1998) Preparation of RNA-protein complexes for X-ray crystallography and NMR. In RNA-Protein Interaction: Practical Approach, Smith C (ed) pp 37-74. Oxford: Oxford University Press

      Sambrook J, Fritsch E & Maniatis T (1989) Molecular Cloning: A Laboratory Manual. Cold Spring Harbour Press, Cold Spring Harbour, New York, USA

    • Links to online resources and websites should be cited in the text only, and should be available long-term (e.g. permalinks or DOI wherever possible). URLs should not appear in the reference list.
    Thanks very much for any coding assistance you can give!
  • adamsmith
    ok, I'll have look but it may take some time.
  • adamsmith
    OK, fixed now - thankfully MSB just uses the style for EMBO journal, already existing for Zotero, so I just had to switch the link.
  • bheavner
    Nice find, Adam!

    Thanks again for your help - I'll play with it some tomorrow, and post to this thread if I find any issues.
  • bheavner
    Uh-oh.

    When I attempt to add a bibliography in Word, I get the following error:

    "The current bibliographic style does not define a bibliography. If you wish to add a bibliography, please choose another style".
  • adamsmith
    Try installing the Embo journal style and see if that works. If it does we'll have to see if we can replicate your issues with the MSB style, but since they're identical, it doesn't really matter which one you use.
  • bheavner
    EMBO Journal does work for me. I'll be able to check for differences between the EMBO Journal and MSB styles at the office tomorrow.
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