How to format your references using the Brain Research citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Brain Research. For a complete guide how to prepare your manuscript refer to the journal's instructions to authors.

Organize your papers in one place. Try Paperpile.
No credit card needed

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.
Organize your papers in one place. Try Paperpile.
No credit card needed
Paperpile screenshot

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
Pan, J., 2009. China expects leadership from rich nations. Nature 461, 1055.
A journal article with 2 authors
Myers, R.A., Worm, B., 2003. Rapid worldwide depletion of predatory fish communities. Nature 423, 280–283.
A journal article with 3 authors
Bino, A., Ardon, M., Shirman, E., 2005. Formation of a carbon-carbon triple bond by coupling reactions in aqueous solution. Science 308, 234–235.
A journal article with 4 or more authors
Hester, J.J., Desch, S.J., Healy, K.R., Leshin, L.A., 2004. Astronomy. The cradle of the solar system. Science 304, 1116–1117.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book
Caferro, W., 2010. Contesting the Renaissance. Wiley-Blackwell, Oxford, UK.
An edited book
Hüllermeier, E., Kruse, R., Hoffmann, F. (Eds.), 2010. Computational Intelligence for Knowledge-Based Systems Design: 13th International Conference on Information Processing and Management of Uncertainty, IPMU 2010, Dortmund, Germany, June 28 - July 2, 2010. Proceedings, Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg.
A chapter in an edited book
Shcheglov, A.S., Zhulidov, P.A., Bogdanova, E.A., Shagin, D.A., 2007. Normalization of cDNA Libraries, in: Buzdin, A.A., Lukyanov, S.A. (Eds.), Nucleic Acids Hybridization Modern Applications. Springer Netherlands, Dordrecht, pp. 97–124.

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.

Blog post
Andrew, E., 2014. Genetic Target May Prevent Weight Gain on High Sugar Diet [WWW Document]. IFLScience. URL https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/genetic-target-may-prevent-weight-gain-high-sugar-diet/ (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, 1989. Hazardous Materials: Federal Training for First Responders to Highway and Railroad Incidents (No. RCED-89-146FS). 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
Keep, A.W., 2013. A nanopass framework for commercial compiler development (Doctoral dissertation). Indiana University, Bloomington, IN.

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
Risen, J., Risen, T., 2017. Donald Trump Does His Best Joe McCarthy. New York Times SR2.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Pan, 2009).
This sentence cites two references (Myers and Worm, 2003; Pan, 2009).

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

  • Two authors: (Myers and Worm, 2003)
  • Three or more authors: (Hester et al., 2004)

About the journal

Full journal titleBrain Research
AbbreviationBrain Res.
ISSN (print)0006-8993
ScopeDevelopmental Biology
Molecular Biology
Clinical Neurology
General Neuroscience

Other styles