LIFE212-Introductory Cell Biology Laboratory (Safadi-Chamberlain)

A.Reference Citations: Documenting the sources that you used to write your paper is a requirement. The citation style required in this paper follows the American Psychological Association (APA) guidelines and the Journal of Biological Chemistry publications.  There are two types of citations

1. In Text Citations: These are references that are cited within the text to flag the readers’ attention to a source material. The source material is then listed as a bibliographic entry in the “List of Citations” at the end of the document. In this paper we use the “Parenthical Citation” style for in text citations.  In this style a reference to the author/s is made in parenthesis at the point of mention of their work in the text as follows:

1. If one author: (Author’s last name, year e.g.: Smith, 2005)

2. Two authors: (First author and second author’s last names, year e.g. Harley and Smith, 2007)

3. More than two authors: list all authors the first time you cite this reference, all subsequent citations are to follow the ‘‘et al.’’ (Latin for “and others”) format.  For example:  First reference citation in a paper would appear as: Smith, Jones and Miles, 2008. Further use of this reference would appear as Smith et al., 2008).

4. If the author/s name is part of the sentence, include the year in parenthesis after the author’s name.  If reporting more than one author in the sentence, write as "author and his associates (year). 

For Example: “Smith (2009) used fluorescence microscopy in studying microtubules, or:  Smith and his associates (2015) used FM to show that actin filaments are involved in …. 

If the author is not a part of the sentence then they would be listed in parenthesis as (author, year) or (Author et al., year) for more than one author, at the end of the sentence that reported their work. 

For Example: FM was used to show that actin filaments are involved in ….  (Smith and Miles 2010) or (nuclei of 3T3L1cells were located using FM (Smith et al., 2010)

(5 points: for correct citations within the text)

2. List of Citations: The bibliographic compilation of the sources that you used and cited within your paper.   This section is located at the end of your paper on a separate page.   Follow this format in citing your references

a.Journal articles:

First Author’s last name, initials, second author’s initials, last name, third and fourth author’s initials, last name etc. (Year) Title of article. Journal name or known abbreviation (in italics), volume # (issue #), pages.  

For Example:  Klippel, A., C. W. M Reinhard,. G. Kavanaugh,. M.A Apell, and L. T Williams (1996).  Membrane localization of phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase is sufficient to activate multiple signal-transducing kinase pathways.  Molecular & Cellular Biology, 16(3), 4117-27.

b. Books: 

Authors (similar to above for Journal articles) (year) Title of the book, Edition, Publisher, Location of Publisher (City, State or country) number of pages.

For Example: Sambrook, J., Fritsch, E.F., and Maniatis, T. (1989) Molecular Cloning: A Laboratory Manual, 2nd Ed., Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, Cold Spring Harbor, NY. 545 p.

The most commonly used citation styles include APA, which you need for your paper. Use these links to for citation help.

There are a few websites that will write your bibliography for you. These can be very helpful, but you should still be familiar with the citation style you are using so you can double check the results. Don't just automatically trust what the website gives you - make sure it makes sense!

There are other resources that allow you to organize your articles and will write your bibliography for you in Word. These citation management tools can be extremely helpful, especially later in your academic career. Two popular ones are Mendeley and Zotero. See these guides for more information:

This is just an example! Your citations may look a little different depending on the information.

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