How to format your references using the Brain Structure and Function citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Brain Structure and Function. 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
White MF (2003) Insulin signaling in health and disease. Science 302:1710–1711
A journal article with 2 authors
Crompton RH, Pataky TC (2009) Anthropology. Stepping out. Science 323:1174–1175
A journal article with 3 authors
Catteruccia F, Godfray HCJ, Crisanti A (2003) Impact of genetic manipulation on the fitness of Anopheles stephensi mosquitoes. Science 299:1225–1227
A journal article with 5 or more authors
Smart N, Bollini S, Dubé KN, et al (2011) De novo cardiomyocytes from within the activated adult heart after injury. Nature 474:640–644

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book
Runcie T, Dochtermann M (2013) Making Effective Business Decisions Using Microsoft Project. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ
An edited book
Barceló P, Pichler R (eds) (2012) Datalog in Academia and Industry: Second International Workshop, Datalog 2.0, Vienna, Austria, September 11-13, 2012. Proceedings. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
A chapter in an edited book
Penati A (2015) The Role of Humanistic Disciplines in a Pedagogy of AdvanceDesign. In: Celi M (ed) Advanced Design Cultures: Long-Term Perspective and Continuous Innovation. Springer International Publishing, Cham, pp 69–85

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 Structure and Function.

Blog post
Davis J (2015) Scientists Fed Volunteers 6,000 Calories For Science. In: IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/scientists-fed-volunteers-6000-calories-day-better-understand-diabetes/. Accessed 30 Oct 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 (1989) Computer Procurement: FAA’s $1.5-Billion Computer Resources Nucleus Project. 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
Gilmore AG (2017) Quantification of oxidative reaction efficiencies for hydroxyl radical oxidized antibiotics. Doctoral dissertation, California State University, Long Beach

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
Pilon M (2013) I.O.C. Nominates American, Signaling A Thaw in Relations. New York Times B12

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (White 2003).
This sentence cites two references (White 2003; Crompton and Pataky 2009).

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

  • Two authors: (Crompton and Pataky 2009)
  • Three or more authors: (Smart et al. 2011)

About the journal

Full journal titleBrain Structure and Function
AbbreviationBrain Struct. Funct.
ISSN (print)1863-2653
ISSN (online)1863-2661
ScopeAnatomy
Histology
General Neuroscience

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