How to format your references using the Acta Neurologica Belgica citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Acta Neurologica Belgica. For a complete guide how to prepare your manuscript refer to the journal's instructions to authors.

Using reference management software

Typically you don't format your citations and bibliography by hand. The easiest way is to use a reference manager:

Paperpile	The citation style is built in and you can choose it in Settings > Citation Style or Paperpile > Citation Style in Google Docs.
EndNote	Find the style here: output styles overview
Mendeley, Zotero, Papers, and others	The style is either built in or you can download a CSL file that is supported by most references management programs.
BibTeX	BibTeX syles are usually part of a LaTeX template. Check the instructions to authors if the publisher offers a LaTeX template for this journal.

Journal articles

Those examples are references to articles in scholarly journals and how they are supposed to appear in your bibliography.

Not all journals organize their published articles in volumes and issues, so these fields are optional. Some electronic journals do not provide a page range, but instead list an article identifier. In a case like this it's safe to use the article identifier instead of the page range.

A journal article with 1 author

Schaetz T (2015) Quantum physics: Entanglement beyond identical ions. Nature 528:337–338

A journal article with 2 authors

Greig D, Travisano M (2003) Evolution. Haploid superiority. Science 299:524–525

A journal article with 3 authors

Huynh WU, Dittmer JJ, Alivisatos AP (2002) Hybrid nanorod-polymer solar cells. Science 295:2425–2427

A journal article with 5 or more authors

Alvarez-Vasquez F, Sims KJ, Cowart LA, et al (2005) Simulation and validation of modelled sphingolipid metabolism in Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Nature 433:425–430

Books and book chapters

Here are examples of references for authored and edited books as well as book chapters.

An authored book

Cerroni L, Gatter K, Kerl H (2009) Skin Lymphoma: The Illustrated Guide. Wiley-Blackwell, Oxford, UK

An edited book

Costa PCG da, d’Amato C, Fanizzi N, et al (2008) Uncertainty Reasoning for the Semantic Web I: ISWC International Workshops, URSW 2005-2007, Revised Selected and Invited Papers. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

A chapter in an edited book

Montobbio F, Sterzi V (2011) Inventing Together: Exploring the Nature of International Knowledge Spillovers in Latin America. In: Pyka A, Derengowski Fonseca M da G (eds) Catching Up, Spillovers and Innovation Networks in a Schumpeterian Perspective. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, pp 81–117

Web sites

Sometimes references to web sites should appear directly in the text rather than in the bibliography. Refer to the Instructions to authors for Acta Neurologica Belgica.

Blog post

Andrew E (2014) A Biologist’s St. Patrick’s Day Song. In: IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/biologist’s-st-patrick’s-day-song/. Accessed 30 Oct 2018

Reports

This example shows the general structure used for government reports, technical reports, and scientific reports. If you can't locate the report number then it might be better to cite the report as a book. For reports it is usually not individual people that are credited as authors, but a governmental department or agency like "U. S. Food and Drug Administration" or "National Cancer Institute".

Government report

Government Accountability Office (2000) National Airspace System: Persistent Problems in FAA’s New Navigation System Highlight Need for Periodic Reevaluation. U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC

Theses and dissertations

Theses including Ph.D. dissertations, Master's theses or Bachelor theses follow the basic format outlined below.

Doctoral dissertation

Bradford J (2012) Commutative endomorphism rings of simple abelian varieties over finite fields. Doctoral dissertation, University of Maryland, College Park

News paper articles

Unlike scholarly journals, news papers do not usually have a volume and issue number. Instead, the full date and page number is required for a correct reference.

New York Times article

Williams J (2017) Leonard Cohen Book Scheduled for 2018. New York Times C3

In-text citations

References should be cited in the text by sequential numbers in square brackets:

This sentence cites one reference [1].
This sentence cites two references [1, 2].
This sentence cites four references [1–4].

About the journal

Full journal title	Acta Neurologica Belgica
Abbreviation	Acta Neurol. Belg.
ISSN (print)	0300-9009
ISSN (online)	2240-2993
Scope	General Medicine Clinical Neurology