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 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

[1]

Gewin V. While industrial agrobiotech R&D falters, opportunities in plant biology in the public sector are growing. Nature 2002;419:4–5.

A journal article with 2 authors

[1]

Maxfield FR, Tabas I. Role of cholesterol and lipid organization in disease. Nature 2005;438:612–21.

A journal article with 3 authors

[1]

Spradling A, Drummond-Barbosa D, Kai T. Stem cells find their niche. Nature 2001;414:98–104.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

[1]

Shalini A, Liu Y, Al-Jarah UAS, Srivastava GP, Wright CD, Katmis F, et al. Observation of T₂-like coherent optical phonons in epitaxial Ge₂Sb₂Te₅/GaSb(001) films. Sci Rep 2013;3:2965.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

[1]

Söchting I. Cognitive Behavioral Group Therapy. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.; 2014.

An edited book

[1]

Freksa C, Knauff M, Krieg-Brückner B, Nebel B, Barkowsky T, editors. Spatial Cognition IV. Reasoning, Action, Interaction: International Conference Spatial Cognition 2004, Frauenchiemsee, Germany, October 11-13, 2004, Revised Selected Papers. vol. 3343. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer; 2005.

A chapter in an edited book

[1]

Lines M. Local Bifurcation Theory Applied to OLG Models. In: Lines M, editor. Nonlinear Dynamical Systems in Economics, Vienna: Springer; 2005, p. 103–30.

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]

Fang J. Mummy CT Scans Show That Pharaohs Were Misdiagnosed. IFLScience 2014. https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/pharaohs-were-misdiagnosed-mummy-ct-scans-show/ (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. Customs Modernization. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 1997.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

[1]

Kennedy KT. A Heuristic Study of Religious Spirituality and Meaningful Work. Doctoral dissertation. George Washington University, 2016.

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]

Kelly M. PRESIDENT TAKES PLANS TO VOTERS. New York Times 1993:A17.

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

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