How to format your references using the Brain and Cognition citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Brain and Cognition. 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	Download the output style file
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

Bystricky, M. (2003). Geophysics. Mantle flow revisited. Science (New York, N.Y.), 301(5637), 1190–1191.

A journal article with 2 authors

Ettema, T. J. G., & Andersson, S. G. E. (2008). Comment on “A 3-hydroxypropionate/4-hydroxybutyrate autotrophic carbon dioxide assimilation pathway in Archaea.” Science (New York, N.Y.), 321(5887), 342; author reply 342.

A journal article with 3 authors

Jiang, K., Li, Q., & Fan, S. (2002). Nanotechnology: spinning continuous carbon nanotube yarns. Nature, 419(6909), 801.

A journal article with 8 or more authors

He, W., Huang, K., Ning, N., Ramanathan, K., Li, G., Jiang, Y., Sze, J., Shi, L., Zhao, R., & Pei, J. (2014). Enabling an integrated rate-temporal learning scheme on memristor. Scientific Reports, 4, 4755.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Machin, D., & Campbell, M. J. (2005). Design of Studies for Medical Research. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

An edited book

Frazier, A. L., & Amatruda, J. F. (Eds.). (2014). Pediatric Germ Cell Tumors: Biology Treatment Survivorship (Vol. 1). Springer.

A chapter in an edited book

Zamani, C. (2013). Nano-Bio Structures Developed via Electrophoresis. In S. Nazarpour (Ed.), Thin Films and Coatings in Biology (pp. 145–170). Springer Netherlands.

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 Brain and Cognition.

Blog post

Andrew, E. (2016, May 4). How Half Our Brain Keeps Watch When We Sleep In Unfamiliar Places. IFLScience; IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/brain/how-half-our-brain-keeps-watch-when-we-sleep-unfamiliar-places/

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. (2011). Aviation Security: TSA Has Made Progress, but Additional Efforts Are Needed to Improve Security (GAO-11-938T). U.S. Government Printing Office.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Beck, R. E. (2012). Examining the relationship between self-initiated expatriation and cross-cultural adjustment among expatriate spouses within nonprofit organizations: A quantitative causal-comparative study [Doctoral dissertation]. Capella University.

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

Crow, K. (2001, August 26). For Aching Knees, a Longer Walk May Be in Store. New York Times, 148.

In-text citations

References should be cited in the text by name and year in parentheses:

This sentence cites one reference (Bystricky, 2003).
This sentence cites two references (Bystricky, 2003; Ettema & Andersson, 2008).

Here are examples of in-text citations with multiple authors:

Two authors: (Ettema & Andersson, 2008)
Three authors: (Jiang et al., 2002)
6 or more authors: (He et al., 2014)

About the journal

Full journal title	Brain and Cognition
Abbreviation	Brain Cogn.
ISSN (print)	0278-2626
Scope	Arts and Humanities (miscellaneous) Cognitive Neuroscience Developmental and Educational Psychology Experimental and Cognitive Psychology Neuropsychology and Physiological Psychology