How to format your references using the Brain Sciences citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Brain Sciences. 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	Find the style here: output styles overview
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

Roebroeks, W. Archaeology: Art on the Move. Nature 2014, 514, 170–171.

A journal article with 2 authors

Chemla, Y.R.; Ha, T. Biophysics. Ultraslow Relaxation of Confined DNA. Science 2014, 345, 380–381.

A journal article with 3 authors

Moritz, C.T.; Perlmutter, S.I.; Fetz, E.E. Direct Control of Paralysed Muscles by Cortical Neurons. Nature 2008, 456, 639–642.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Galinha, C.; Hofhuis, H.; Luijten, M.; Willemsen, V.; Blilou, I.; Heidstra, R.; Scheres, B. PLETHORA Proteins as Dose-Dependent Master Regulators of Arabidopsis Root Development. Nature 2007, 449, 1053–1057.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Walkenbach, J. Excel® VBA Programming For Dummies®; Wiley Publishing, Inc.: Indianapolis, IN, USA, 2010; ISBN 9781118257654.

An edited book

Great Nations at Peril; Backhaus, J., Ed.; The European Heritage in Economics and the Social Sciences; Springer International Publishing: Cham, 2015; Vol. 17; ISBN 9783319100548.

A chapter in an edited book

Barden, B.; DiVenere, J.; Singh, H.; Mazzocca, A.D. Postoperative Shoulder Stiffness After Rotator Cuff Repair. In Shoulder Stiffness: Current Concepts and Concerns; Itoi, E., Arce, G., Bain, G.I., Diercks, R.L., Guttmann, D., Imhoff, A.B., Mazzocca, A.D., Sugaya, H., Yoo, Y.-S., Eds.; Springer: Berlin, Heidelberg, 2015; pp. 49–73 ISBN 9783662463697.

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 Sciences.

Blog post

Andrew, E. These Virtual Reality Headsets Make Farmed Chickens Believe They Roam Free Available online: https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/these-virtual-reality-headsets-make-farmed-chickens-believe-they-roam-free/ (accessed on 30 October 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

Government Accountability Office Space Surveillance: DOD and NASA Need Consolidated Requirements and a Coordinated Plan; U.S. Government Printing Office: Washington, DC, 1997;

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Gillaspy, K.M. Words of Samsara. Doctoral dissertation, California State University, Long Beach: Long Beach, CA, 2012.

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

Shear, M.D.; Martin, J. Trump Welcomes West Virginia Governor to G.O.P. New York Times 2017, A14.

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 Sciences
Abbreviation	Brain Sci.
ISSN (online)	2076-3425
Scope

Research and Writing Guides