How to format your references using the Current Opinion in Neurobiology citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Current Opinion in Neurobiology. 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

Huntress WT Jr: Planetary science. Human space exploration is about more than just science. Science 2003, 301:771.

A journal article with 2 authors

Mohr JJ, Forsberg R: Remote sensing: searching for new islands in sea ice. Nature 2002, 416:35.

A journal article with 3 authors

Dally JM, Emery NJ, Clayton NS: Food-caching western scrub-jays keep track of who was watching when. Science 2006, 312:1662–1665.

A journal article with 11 or more authors

Chan RC, Chan A, Jeon M, Wu TF, Pasqualone D, Rougvie AE, Meyer BJ: Chromosome cohesion is regulated by a clock gene paralogue TIM-1. Nature 2003, 423:1002–1009.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Zinkin J: Rebuilding Trust in Banks. John Wiley & Sons Ltd; 2013.

An edited book

Studer UE (Ed): Keys to Successful Orthotopic Bladder Substitution. Springer International Publishing; 2015.

A chapter in an edited book

Daniels JA, Bradley MC: Successfully Resolved Barricaded Captive Events. In Preventing Lethal School Violence. Edited by Bradley MC. Springer; 2011:57–70.

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 Current Opinion in Neurobiology.

Blog post

Hamilton K: Watch Baby Spiders “Explode” From Mother During Fight. IFLScience 2014,

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: Spectrum Management: Further Consideration of Options to Improve Receiver Performance Needed. U.S. Government Printing Office; 2013.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Powell JR: Ocean fronts in the Southern California Current System and their role in structuring zooplankton distributions, diel vertical migration, and size composition. 2013,

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

Brantley B: Awaiting Execution, a Prophet Holds Forth. New York Times 2016,

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	Current Opinion in Neurobiology
Abbreviation	Curr. Opin. Neurobiol.
ISSN (print)	0959-4388
ISSN (online)	1873-6882
Scope	General Neuroscience