How to format your references using the Genes, Brain and Behavior citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Genes, Brain and Behavior. 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

Guberman, S.L. (2001) Chemistry. Breaking up is hard to do without an electron. Science 294, 1474–1475.

A journal article with 2 authors

Di Noia, J. & Neuberger, M.S. (2002) Altering the pathway of immunoglobulin hypermutation by inhibiting uracil-DNA glycosylase. Nature 419, 43–48.

A journal article with 3 authors

Davis, M.C., Dahn, R.D. & Shubin, N.H. (2007) An autopodial-like pattern of Hox expression in the fins of a basal actinopterygian fish. Nature 447, 473–476.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Smart, N., Bollini, S., Dubé, K.N., Vieira, J.M., Zhou, B., Davidson, S., Yellon, D., Riegler, J., Price, A.N., Lythgoe, M.F., Pu, W.T. & Riley, P.R. (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

van Helvoort, H. (2005) Next Generation SDH/SONET. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, Chichester, UK.

An edited book

Jones, N.D. & Müller-Olm, M. (eds). (2009) Verification, Model Checking, and Abstract Interpretation: 10th International Conference, VMCAI 2009, Savannah, GA, USA, January 18-20, 2009. Proceedings. , Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg.

A chapter in an edited book

Maarse, N. & Janssen, M. (2012) The Need to Adjust Lean to the Public Sector. In Scholl, H.J., Janssen, M., Wimmer, M.A., Moe, C.E. & Flak, L.S. (eds), Electronic Government: 11th IFIP WG 8.5 International Conference, EGOV 2012, Kristiansand, Norway, September 3-6, 2012. Proceedings, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, pp. 54–65.

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 Genes, Brain and Behavior.

Blog post

Andrew, E. (2014) Could Megalodon Still Live In The Deep Ocean? [WWW Document]. IFLScience. URL https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/could-megalodon-still-live-deep-ocean/

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. (2013) Federal Vehicle Fleets: Adopting Leading Practices Could Improve Management ( No. GAO-13-659). 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

Canetta, S.E. (2010) Type III Neuregulin1 Signaling in Peripheral Sensory Neurons Affects Thermal Pain Sensation and Hyperalgesia. Doctoral dissertation, Columbia University, New York, NY.

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

Walsh, M.W. (2013) Pension Ruling in Detroit Echoes West to California. New York Times A20.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Guberman 2001).
This sentence cites two references (Guberman 2001; Di Noia & Neuberger 2002).

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

Two authors: (Di Noia & Neuberger 2002)
Three or more authors: (Smart et al. 2011)

About the journal

Full journal title	Genes, Brain and Behavior
Abbreviation	Genes Brain Behav.
ISSN (print)	1601-1848
ISSN (online)	1601-183X
Scope	Genetics Behavioral Neuroscience Neurology

Research and Writing Guides