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

Myers S (2003) Forensics offers career opportunities for the Sherlock Holmes of the future--and the work is far from elementary. Nature 421:872–873

A journal article with 2 authors

Misra A, Kumar P (2013) Periodic architecture for high performance shock absorbing composites. Sci Rep 3:2056

A journal article with 3 authors

Delsuc F, Phillips MJ, Penny D (2003) Comment on “Hexapod origins: monophyletic or paraphyletic?” Science 301:1482; author reply 1482

A journal article with 5 or more authors

Mitra K, Schaffitzel C, Shaikh T, et al (2005) Structure of the E. coli protein-conducting channel bound to a translating ribosome. Nature 438:318–324

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Gadd K (2016) TRIZ für Ingenieure. Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim, Germany

An edited book

Machiraju VR, Schaff HV, Svensson LG (2012) Redo Cardiac Surgery in Adults, Second Edition. Springer, New York, NY

A chapter in an edited book

Kramer M (2009) The Double Pulsar: A Unique Lab for Relativistic Plasma Physics and Tests of General Relativity. In: Becker W (ed) Neutron Stars and Pulsars. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, pp 73–90

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

Davis J (2015) BP Agrees to Pay Largest Environmental Fine in American History. 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 (2007) Digital Television Transition: Preliminary Information on Initial Consumer Education Efforts. 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

Mills AD (2016) Strategic school solutions: A capacity building framework for leaders accelerating 21st century teaching and learning. Doctoral dissertation, Pepperdine University

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

Barker K, Shah PZ, Goldstein J, Silver-Greenberg J (2016) From Class Clown to Manhattan Bomb Suspect. New York Times A1

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