How to format your references using the Molecular Brain citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Molecular Brain. 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	Find the style here: output styles overview
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

1. Butler D. Mozambique prime minister tipped for global health post. Nature. 2003;421:302.

A journal article with 2 authors

1. Sack FD, Chen J-G. Plant science. Pores in place. Science. 2009;323:592–3.

A journal article with 3 authors

1. Chen I, Christie PJ, Dubnau D. The ins and outs of DNA transfer in bacteria. Science. 2005;310:1456–60.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

1. Zdanowicz M, Harra J, Mäkelä JM, Heinonen E, Ning T, Kauranen M, et al. Second-harmonic response of multilayer nanocomposites of silver-decorated nanoparticles and silica. Sci Rep. 2014;4:5745.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

1. Arboleda H, Royer J-C. Model-Driven and Software Product Line Engineering. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.; 2012.

An edited book

1. Singh Saharan G. Alternaria Diseases of Crucifers: Biology, Ecology and Disease Management. 1st ed. 2016. Mehta N, Meena PD, editors. Singapore: Springer; 2016.

A chapter in an edited book

1. Atef M, Zimmermann H. Discrete Photodiodes. In: Zimmermann H, editor. Optoelectronic Circuits in Nanometer CMOS Technology. Cham: Springer International Publishing; 2016. p. 59–65.

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 Molecular Brain.

Blog post

1. Hamilton K. Girls May Perform Better At School Than Boys – But Their Experience Is Much Less Happy. IFLScience. IFLScience; 2016.

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

1. Government Accountability Office. Space Shuttle: NASA’s Plans for Repairing or Replacing a Damaged or Destroyed Orbiter. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 1994 Jul. Report No.: NSIAD-94-197.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

1. Henning JN. Top ten effective community college board trustees self-perceived leadership attributes [Doctoral dissertation]. [Malibu, CA]: Pepperdine University; 2014.

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

1. Montgomery D, Fernandez M, Joseph Y. Journey Fatal for 9 Migrants Found in Truck in a San Antonio Parking Lot. New York Times. 2017 Jul 23;A10.

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	Molecular Brain
Abbreviation	Mol. Brain
ISSN (online)	1756-6606
Scope	Molecular Biology Cellular and Molecular Neuroscience