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:

PaperpileThe citation style is built in and you can choose it in Settings > Citation Style or Paperpile > Citation Style in Google Docs.
EndNoteDownload the output style file
Mendeley, Zotero, Papers, and othersThe style is either built in or you can download a CSL file that is supported by most references management programs.
BibTeXBibTeX 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
Perry, M. L. (2015). BATTERIES. Expanding the chemical space for redox flow batteries. Science (New York, N.Y.), 349(6255), 1452.
A journal article with 2 authors
Carlip, S., & Vaidya, S. (2003). Cosmology: Do black holes constrain varying constants? Nature, 421(6922), 498.
A journal article with 3 authors
Ruthazer, E. S., Akerman, C. J., & Cline, H. T. (2003). Control of axon branch dynamics by correlated activity in vivo. Science (New York, N.Y.), 301(5629), 66–70.
A journal article with 8 or more authors
Fulde, M., Sommer, F., Chassaing, B., van Vorst, K., Dupont, A., Hensel, M., Basic, M., Klopfleisch, R., Rosenstiel, P., Bleich, A., Bäckhed, F., Gewirtz, A. T., & Hornef, M. W. (2018). Neonatal selection by Toll-like receptor 5 influences long-term gut microbiota composition. Nature, 560(7719), 489–493.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book
Wilmott, P., & Orrell, D. (2017). The Money Formula. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
An edited book
Stiefel, F. (Ed.). (2006). Communication in Cancer Care (Vol. 168). Springer.
A chapter in an edited book
Nathanson, S. (2014). Political Polarization and the Markets vs. Government Debate. In A. E. Cudd & S. J. Scholz (Eds.), Philosophical Perspectives on Democracy in the 21st Century (pp. 57–73). Springer International Publishing.

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
O`Callaghan, J. (2017, February 7). This Black Hole Has Been Eating A Star For 10 Years, Longer Than Any Observed Before. IFLScience; IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/space/this-black-hole-has-been-eating-a-star-for-10-years-longer-than-any-observed-before/

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. (1995). Title 6 T&A Data (NASA) (AIMD-95-140R). 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
Young, D. L. (2012). A phenomenological investigation of science center exhibition developers’ expertise development [Doctoral dissertation]. University of North Carolina.

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
Stewart, J. B. (2017, May 4). They Exposed a Scandal, But Merited Just a Footnote. New York Times, B1.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Perry, 2015).
This sentence cites two references (Carlip & Vaidya, 2003; Perry, 2015).

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

  • Two authors: (Carlip & Vaidya, 2003)
  • Three authors: (Ruthazer et al., 2003)
  • 6 or more authors: (Fulde et al., 2018)

About the journal

Full journal titleBrain and Cognition
AbbreviationBrain Cogn.
ISSN (print)0278-2626
ScopeArts and Humanities (miscellaneous)
Cognitive Neuroscience
Developmental and Educational Psychology
Experimental and Cognitive Psychology
Neuropsychology and Physiological Psychology

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