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.

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
Zastrow, M., 2015. Data visualization: science on the map. Nature 519, 119–120.
A journal article with 2 authors
Deeks, S.G., Barré-Sinoussi, F., 2012. Public health: Towards a cure for HIV. Nature 487, 293–294.
A journal article with 3 authors
Aitken, R.J., Koopman, P., Lewis, S.E.M., 2004. Seeds of concern. Nature 432, 48–52.
A journal article with 4 or more authors
Ni, S., Tan, E., Gurnis, M., Helmberger, D., 2002. Sharp sides to the African superplume. Science 296, 1850–1852.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book
Wren, C., 2011. Concise Guide to Pediatric Arrhythmias. Wiley-Blackwell, Oxford, UK.
An edited book
Russo, B., Damiani, E., Hissam, S., Lundell, B., Succi, G. (Eds.), 2008. Open Source Development, Communities and Quality: IFIP 20th World Computer Congress, Working Group 2.3 on Open Source Software, September 7-10, 2008, Milano, Italy, IFIP – The International Federation for Information Processing. Springer US, Boston, MA.
A chapter in an edited book
Heinemann, G., Gaiser, C., 2015. Mobile Commerce as Base Factor No. 3 for SoLoMo, in: Gaiser, C. (Ed.), Social - Local - Mobile: The Future of Location-Based Services, Management for Professionals. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, pp. 101–154.

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., 2015. Watch What Happens When A Ball Of Red-Hot Nickel Is Placed On Floral Foam [WWW Document]. IFLScience. URL https://www.iflscience.com/editors-blog/watch-what-happens-when-ball-red-hot-nickel-placed-floral-foam/ (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, 2003. NASA: Shuttle Fleet’s Safe Return to Flight Is Key to Space Station Progress (No. GAO-04-201T). 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
Datta, A., 2017. Speech Synthesis Using Unsupervised Learning (Doctoral dissertation). California State University, Long Beach, Long Beach, CA.

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
(nyt), S.K., 2004. World Briefing | Europe: Russia: Bombs Injure 8 In Area Near Chechnya. New York Times A9.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Zastrow, 2015).
This sentence cites two references (Deeks and Barré-Sinoussi, 2012; Zastrow, 2015).

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

  • Two authors: (Deeks and Barré-Sinoussi, 2012)
  • Three or more authors: (Ni et al., 2002)

About the journal

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

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