Cell Formatting Requirements: Complete Author Guide

Cell asks for three separate summary elements: the Summary in the manuscript, plus Highlights and an eTOC blurb that go in a separate Word document with the final files.

Summary (Abstract): 150 words maximum, unstructured single paragraph, no citations. Cell calls it the "Summary" rather than "Abstract."

Highlights: 3-4 bullet points, each limited to 85 characters including spaces. No abbreviations. Highlights help increase the discoverability of your paper via search engines, so each one should state a single, specific finding. "We identify a novel mechanism" is too vague. "BRCA1 editing restores homologous recombination in patient-derived organoids" is closer to the right level of specificity.

eTOC Blurb: 50 words or fewer (two sentences), written in third person ("Smith et al. show that..." not "We show that..."). It is included on the article's cover page and in email alerts about new issues of the journal, and it is also called an "in brief." Write it for a broad biology audience, not specialists.

Highlights and the eTOC blurb should be submitted together in a single Word document, separate from the main manuscript text.

How to write Cell Highlights without wasting the 85 characters

Cell Highlights are not mini-abstracts. Treat each bullet as one search-visible

finding that a broad cell-biology reader can understand before opening the PDF.

Elsevier's general Highlights guidance says Cell Press articles use three to

four bullets, each 85 characters or fewer, and that they should capture novel

results or new methods rather than background.

In our checks of Cell-targeted drafts, weak Highlights usually fail in one of

three ways: they restate the title, they describe the method instead of the

finding, or they use the whole bullet on field-level importance. A better set

uses the bullets as a sequence:

1. the central mechanism or cell-state change;
2. the strongest validation result;
3. the disease, organism, or system consequence;
4. the method contribution only if the method is itself part of the claim.

Do not copy this sequence mechanically. A purely computational or resource

paper may need a methods-forward bullet, while a mechanistic Article usually

needs validation-forward bullets. The check is whether each bullet would still

be useful if it appeared alone in a table of contents, search snippet, or alert

email.

Graphical abstract (mandatory): The graphical abstract must be exactly 1,200 x 1,200 pixels (square) at 300 dpi, submitted as a separate TIFF, PDF, or JPG file with the final files, with minimal text and self-explanatory without a legend. Cell Press lists it as a final-submission item, not an initial-submission item. Use BioRender or Adobe Illustrator, not PowerPoint screenshots.

Multi-panel figures: Cell papers typically use dense multi-panel figures with 4-8 panels each. There's no explicit panel limit, but readability matters. Cell Press says the quality and presentation of supplemental information should match the standards of the main article.

Color is free if you publish open access. Under the default subscription model, Cell charges $1,000 for the first color figure and $275 for each additional one; those fees are waived for open access articles. Cell expects high-quality color presentation, and consistent color schemes across figures are strongly encouraged.

Cell uses numbered superscript citations. In-text: superscript numbers (e.g., "as previously reported^1,2,3"). Ranges condense (e.g., ^1-5).

Reference list format (worked example):

1. Zhang, Y., Chen, L., and Patel, W.R. (2026). Title of article. *Cell* **189**, 1234-1250. [DOI].

Key formatting details:

• Full author list up to 10 authors; use "et al." after the 10th

• Year in parentheses immediately after the author list

• Article title included (some numbered styles omit titles; Cell doesn't)

• Journal name abbreviated as in Cell Press's examples (for example, Mol. Cell)

• Volume number after the journal abbreviation

• DOI included for article references

• "and" before the last author, not "&"

Cell's author pages do not state a reference limit for Articles or Short Articles (Reviews and Perspectives allow up to 100 references), so keep the list to what the paper needs. Preprint references are allowed with appropriate identification information and an independent persistent identifier such as a DOI. Editors may ask you to update preprint references to published versions during revision.

Cell's supplementary content is structured differently from Nature or Science.

Supplementary Figures: Supplementary figures (labeled S1, S2, and so on) are compiled into a single supplementary PDF with legends. Cell Press sets no strict limit on supplemental items for Articles but recommends no more than 20 supplemental figures per paper. Short Articles allow up to 4 supplementary figures but up to 8 total supplemental items including tables and videos. Cell Press says the quality and presentation of supplemental information should match the standards of the main article.

Supplementary Tables: Tables that fit in three pages go in the supplementary PDF; longer tables are submitted as Excel or similar tabular files.

Data and Code Deposits: Cell Press requires authors to share the data and original code reported in the paper unless there is a legal or ethical prohibition. Standardized data types must be deposited in a Cell Press-recommended repository before acceptance, and accession numbers or DOIs are reported in the paper. Cell Press also encourages publishing original, unprocessed data through Mendeley Data and links the paper and dataset to each other.

STAR Methods (Structured, Transparent, Accessible Reporting) replaced traditional Materials and Methods in 2016 and is mandatory for all Cell research articles. It's one of the journal's most distinctive features.

An important practical detail from Cell Press: your manuscript does not need to follow STAR Methods format at initial submission. If your paper is accepted, your handling editor will work with you to format the STAR Methods section. That said, submitting with STAR Methods already formatted signals familiarity with the journal.

STAR Methods are divided into four standard headings plus a Key Resources Table. The Resource Availability statement is a separate main-text section that Cell Press requires for all research articles:

Resource Availability (main text, three mandatory subheadings)

• Lead contact (name and email)

• Materials availability (reagent sharing statement)

• Data and code availability (repository accession numbers, DOIs)

The four STAR Methods headings are:

1. Experimental Model and Study Participant Details (when appropriate)

• Cell lines, animal models, human subjects with full provenance

1. Method Details (required)

• Full experimental procedures, organized with up to two levels of subheadings

1. Quantification and Statistical Analysis (when appropriate)

• All statistical tests, software, sample sizes, significance thresholds

1. Additional Resources (when appropriate)

• Links to websites with further information relevant to the study, and clinical trial registry numbers

Key Resources Table (KRT): The centerpiece of STAR Methods and entirely unique to Cell Press. The KRT is a structured table listing every reagent, antibody, cell line, organism, software tool, algorithm, chemical, peptide, recombinant DNA, deposited data, and other resource used in the study. Each entry includes the resource name, source, and identifier (catalog number, RRID, accession number, URL). Cell Press asks for RRIDs for antibodies and genetically modified organisms in the Key Resources Table, and highly recommends them for other experimental models. The KRT template is available from the Cell Press author guidelines.

All original code must be deposited in a repository that mints DOIs (GitHub + Zenodo, for example) or included in supplemental information before acceptance.

The formatting issues that matter for Cell are not just file-cleanup problems.

They change how the editor reads the science. In our pre-submission review work

on Cell-targeted manuscripts, the recurring patterns are specific enough to

check before upload:

Highlights that describe the manuscript instead of the result. A Cell

Highlight such as "This study reveals a new immune mechanism" does not help the

editor or reader locate the paper's contribution. The stronger version names

the immune cell, perturbation, and consequence. This is a manuscript-component

problem because it affects the Highlights file, title alignment, and eTOC

positioning at the same time.

STAR Methods that hide a validation gap. A methods section can use the

right Cell Press headings and still fail the editorial read if the genetic,

biochemical, pharmacological, or statistical validation is buried. We check

whether the STAR Methods, Key Resources Table, and figure legends make the

main mechanism auditable rather than just formally complete.

Graphical abstracts that repeat Figure 1. Cell's graphical abstract should

show the conceptual finding or workflow. When authors crop a figure panel, the

file may satisfy an image-size check but still fail the table-of-contents job.

That problem usually travels with overlong figure legends and vague

Highlights, so it needs a package-level fix.

Reference output that looks numbered but is not Cell style. EndNote,

Zotero, and Mendeley can produce numbered references that still carry

the wrong author punctuation or a non-Cell journal-title style. The

reference list, in-text citations, and final submission files should be checked

together because one exported style can create errors across the manuscript.

The practical test we use is whether the formatting package strengthens the

editorial argument instead of merely avoiding a technical return. For Cell,

that means the Highlights file should name the result the editor will remember,

the graphical abstract should make the mechanism legible before the figure set,

the STAR Methods should expose the validation chain behind the strongest claim,

and the reference list should not signal that the manuscript was exported from

a generic numbered template. If those four pieces point in different

directions, the page count and figure count can be correct while the submission

still feels less Cell-ready than the science deserves.

For manuscripts targeting Cell, four patterns generate the most consistent desk-rejection outcomes.

STAR Methods incomplete or not properly structured. Cell's author guidelines mandate the STAR Methods format with fixed section headers: Experimental Model and Study Participant Details, Method Details, Quantification and Statistical Analysis, and Additional Resources, with Resource Availability as a separate main-text section. The guidelines further require a Key Resources Table listing all key reagents, antibodies, cell lines, software, and datasets with catalog numbers and identifiers.

Cell Press does not require STAR Methods formatting at initial submission, but it requires the format in revision and for acceptance, so a conventional Materials and Methods section is a revision task. The STAR Methods section goes in the manuscript file after the figure legends and tables and before the references, and it is part of the main article, not supplemental information.

Highlights missing or not meeting character limits. Cell requires 3-4 bullet-point Highlights, each no longer than 85 characters including spaces. Highlights help increase the discoverability of your paper via search engines. Highlights that are too long or too vague ("We identify a new mechanism") do not do that job. The Cell guidelines specify that Highlights should convey the core findings, not restate the title.

Graphical abstract repurposed from a figure panel. Cell requires a 1,200 x 1,200 pixel graphical abstract in TIFF, PDF, or JPG format with minimal text, submitted as a separate file. The guidelines distinguish this from figure panels: it should be a purpose-built schematic summarizing the study's conceptual contribution.

Correlative data without mechanistic validation. Cell describes its basic criterion as whether the results provide significant conceptual advances into, or raise provocative questions and hypotheses regarding, an interesting and important biological question. Studies that identify correlations without genetic knockouts, rescue experiments, or equivalent mechanistic evidence are unlikely to show the kind of conceptual advance Cell describes.

A Cell submission readiness check evaluates STAR Methods completeness, Highlights format, graphical abstract compliance, and mechanistic evidence quality against these patterns.