How to format your references using the Molecular and Cellular Neuroscience citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Molecular and Cellular Neuroscience. 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

Powell, K., 2003. High-tech, high society. Nature 426, 720–721.

A journal article with 2 authors

Borgani, S., Guzzo, L., 2001. X-ray clusters of galaxies as tracers of structure in the Universe. Nature 409, 39–45.

A journal article with 3 authors

Brookmeyer, R., Johnson, E., Bollinger, R., 2004. Public health vaccination policies for containing an anthrax outbreak. Nature 432, 901–904.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Giasson, B.I., Forman, M.S., Higuchi, M., Golbe, L.I., Graves, C.L., Kotzbauer, P.T., Trojanowski, J.Q., Lee, V.M.-Y., 2003. Initiation and synergistic fibrillization of tau and alpha-synuclein. Science 300, 636–640.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Lunn, G., 2005. HPLC Methods for Recently Approved Pharmaceuticals. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ.

An edited book

Hakeem, K.R. (Ed.), 2015. Crop Production and Global Environmental Issues. Springer International Publishing, Cham.

A chapter in an edited book

Li, P., Makino, H., 2014. Liquefied Dimethyl Ether: An Energy-Saving, Green Extraction Solvent, in: Chemat, F., Vian, M.A. (Eds.), Alternative Solvents for Natural Products Extraction, Green Chemistry and Sustainable Technology. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, pp. 91–106.

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 Molecular and Cellular Neuroscience.

Blog post

Andrew, D., 2016. Do Opioids Make Pain Worse? [WWW Document]. IFLScience. URL https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/do-opioids-make-pain-worse/ (accessed 10.30.18).

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, 2000. Mass Transit: Review of the Tren Urbano Finance Plan (No. RCED-00-94R). 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

Horning, C.L., 2017. Kinesthetic learning in algebra and its effects on students’ achievement and disposition toward mathemathics (Doctoral dissertation). California State University, Long Beach, Long Beach, CA.

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

Williams, J., 2017. Where Charlotte and Jane Meet. New York Times BR4.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Powell, 2003).
This sentence cites two references (Borgani and Guzzo, 2001; Powell, 2003).

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

Two authors: (Borgani and Guzzo, 2001)
Three or more authors: (Giasson et al., 2003)

About the journal

Full journal title	Molecular and Cellular Neuroscience
Abbreviation	Mol. Cell. Neurosci.
ISSN (print)	1044-7431
Scope	Cell Biology Molecular Biology Cellular and Molecular Neuroscience