How to format your references using the Brain Research Bulletin citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Brain Research Bulletin. 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
Tal, A., 2006. Seeking sustainability: Israel’s evolving water management strategy. Science 313, 1081–1084.
A journal article with 2 authors
Jacak, B.V., Müller, B., 2012. The exploration of hot nuclear matter. Science 337, 310–314.
A journal article with 3 authors
Elion, E.A., Qi, M., Chen, W., 2005. Signal transduction. Signaling specificity in yeast. Science 307, 687–688.
A journal article with 4 or more authors
Izumi, Y., Xu, L., di Tomaso, E., Fukumura, D., Jain, R.K., 2002. Tumour biology: herceptin acts as an anti-angiogenic cocktail. Nature 416, 279–280.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book
Charalambides, C.A., 2005. Combinatorial Methods in Discrete Distributions: Charalambides/Combinatorial, Wiley Series in Probability and Statistics. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ.
An edited book
Pattaro, E., Roversi, C. (Eds.), 2016. A Treatise of Legal Philosophy and General Jurisprudence: Volume 12: Legal Philosophy in the Twentieth Century: The Civil Law World, Tome 1: Language Areas, Tome 2: Main Orientations and Topics. Springer Netherlands, Dordrecht.
A chapter in an edited book
Suh, J.M., Fulginiti, K., 2011. Developing Mathematical Potential in Underrepresented Populations through Problem Solving, Mathematical Discourse and Algebraic Reasoning, in: Sriraman, B., Lee, K.H. (Eds.), The Elements of Creativity and Giftedness in Mathematics. SensePublishers, Rotterdam, pp. 67–79.

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 Research Bulletin.

Blog post
Fang, J., 2014. How Electric Fish Evolved Shocker of an Organ Six Times [WWW Document]. IFLScience. URL https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/how-electric-fish-evolved-shocker-organ-six-times/ (accessed 10.30.18).

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, 1999. Year 2000 Computing Crisis: Status of the Water Industry (No. AIMD-99-151). 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
Cox, E.T., 2012. Prenatal cocaine: Effects on neonatal vocalizations, cue-induced maternal response, and brain development (Doctoral dissertation). University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC.

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
Vecsey, G., 2010. Worst Call Ever? Sure. Kill the Umpires? Never. New York Times A1.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Tal, 2006).
This sentence cites two references (Jacak and Müller, 2012; Tal, 2006).

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

  • Two authors: (Jacak and Müller, 2012)
  • Three or more authors: (Izumi et al., 2002)

About the journal

Full journal titleBrain Research Bulletin
AbbreviationBrain Res. Bull.
ISSN (print)0361-9230
ScopeGeneral Neuroscience

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