How to format your references using the Molecular Neurobiology citation style

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

Chaieb S (2014) Elasto-plasticity in wrinkled polymerized lipid membranes. Sci Rep 4:3699

A journal article with 2 authors

Sercombe TB, Schaffer GB (2003) Rapid manufacturing of aluminum components. Science 301:1225–1227

A journal article with 3 authors

Javaux EJ, Knoll AH, Walter MR (2001) Morphological and ecological complexity in early eukaryotic ecosystems. Nature 412:66–69

A journal article with 5 or more authors

Schulz KG, Zondervan I, Gerringa LJA, et al (2004) Effect of trace metal availability on coccolithophorid calcification. Nature 430:673–676

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Golio M (2006) Engineering Your Retirement. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ

An edited book

Komosinski M, Adamatzky A (2009) Artificial Life Models in Software. Springer, London

A chapter in an edited book

Canuto C, Tabacco A (2015) Local comparison of functions. Numerical sequences and series. In: Tabacco A (ed) Mathematical Analysis I. Springer International Publishing, Cham, pp 123–168

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 Neurobiology.

Blog post

O`Callaghan J (2015) Search For Extraterrestrial Intelligence Institute Release First Observations From “Alien Megastructure” Star. 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 (1983) The Effects of Changes in the Telecommunications Industry on FCC Operations. 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

Bourgault RR (2008) Multi-scale pedologic investigation of manganiferous soils in the Maryland Piedmont. Doctoral dissertation, University of Maryland, College Park

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

Quain JR (2016) Carmakers Employ Technology to Give Vehicles Well-Tuned Interiors. New York Times B3

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 Neurobiology
Abbreviation	Mol. Neurobiol.
ISSN (print)	0893-7648
ISSN (online)	1559-1182
Scope	Cellular and Molecular Neuroscience