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:

Paperpile	The citation style is built in and you can choose it in Settings > Citation Style or Paperpile > Citation Style in Google Docs.
EndNote	Download the output style file
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

Goymer P (2014) Biodiversity: Leaping lizards. Nature 513:492

A journal article with 2 authors

Singh I, Rose N (2009) Biomarkers in psychiatry. Nature 460:202–207

A journal article with 3 authors

Koschowitz M-C, Fischer C, Sander M (2014) Evolution. Beyond the rainbow. Science 346:416–418

A journal article with 5 or more authors

MacDonald MP, Paterson L, Volke-Sepulveda K, et al (2002) Creation and manipulation of three-dimensional optically trapped structures. Science 296:1101–1103

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

McCurley L (2016) Professional Rope Access. John Wiley & Sons, Inc, Hoboken, NJ

An edited book

Xu H, Wang X (eds) (2014) Optimization and Control Methods in Industrial Engineering and Construction. Springer Netherlands, Dordrecht

A chapter in an edited book

Pacelli V (2016) The Case Study of Goldman Sachs. In: Dell’Atti S, Trotta A (eds) Managing Reputation in The Banking Industry: Theory and Practice. Springer International Publishing, Cham, pp 79–99

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

Andrew E (2014) Genes Could Be Influencing Our Weight By Shaping Which Microbes Inhabit Our Gut. In: IFLScience. 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 (1994) International Aviation: New Competitive Conditions Require Changes in DOT Strategy. 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

Freeman MJ (2012) Gene-environment interaction in early onset bipolar disorder. Doctoral dissertation, University of North Carolina

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) Races End Fees to Top Runners, Drawing Outcry. 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 (Goymer 2014).
This sentence cites two references (Singh and Rose 2009; Goymer 2014).

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

Two authors: (Singh and Rose 2009)
Three or more authors: (MacDonald et al. 2002)

About the journal

Full journal title	Brain Structure and Function
Abbreviation	Brain Struct. Funct.
ISSN (print)	1863-2653
ISSN (online)	1863-2661
Scope	Anatomy Histology General Neuroscience