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

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Brain and Development. 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 reference managers.
BibTeX	BibTeX styles 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

[1]

Nordhaus WD. Climate change. Global warming economics. Science 2001;294:1283–4.

A journal article with 2 authors

[1]

Pallen MJ, Wren BW. Bacterial pathogenomics. Nature 2007;449:835–42.

A journal article with 3 authors

[1]

Clutton-Brock TH, Coulson T, Milner JM. Red deer stocks in the Highlands of Scotland. Nature 2004;429:261–2.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

[1]

Lake JA, Quick WP, Beerling DJ, Woodward FI. Plant development. Signals from mature to new leaves. Nature 2001;411:154.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

[1]

Morris A. A Practical Guide to Reliable Finite Element Modelling. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd; 2008.

An edited book

[1]

Evans HM, Burt TP, editors. The Collegiate Way: University Education in a Collegiate Context. Rotterdam: SensePublishers; 2016.

A chapter in an edited book

[1]

Trybulec A. Mizar. In: Wiedijk F, editor. The Seventeen Provers of the World: Foreword by Dana S. Scott, Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer; 2006, p. 20–3.

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 Development.

Blog post

[1]

Andrews R. Check Out This Great Footage Of Space Junk “WT1190F” Burning Up In Atmosphere. IFLScience 2015. https://www.iflscience.com/space/aerial-scientists-spot-space-junk-wt1190f-burning-atmosphere/ (accessed October 30, 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

[1]

Government Accountability Office. Higher Education: Ensuring Quality Education From Proprietary Institutions. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 1996.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

[1]

Farrugia TJ. Abundance, habitat use and movement patterns of the shovelnose guitarfish (Rhinobatus productus) in a restored Southern California estuary. Doctoral dissertation. California State University, Long Beach, 2010.

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

[1]

Wagner J. Pitching Took Root After the Troubles Were Left Behind. New York Times 2017:D3.

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	Brain and Development
Abbreviation	Brain Dev.
ISSN (print)	0387-7604
Scope	General Medicine Clinical Neurology Pediatrics, Perinatology, and Child Health Developmental Neuroscience