How to format your references using the Nature Neuroscience citation style

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

Liu, Z. Atmospheric science. Glacial cycles and Indian monsoon--a southern push. Science 333, 706–708 (2011).

A journal article with 2 authors

Montgomery, D. R. & Manga, M. Streamflow and water well responses to earthquakes. Science 300, 2047–2049 (2003).

A journal article with 3 authors

Pollack, S. E., Dries, D. & Hulet, R. G. Universality in three- and four-body bound states of ultracold atoms. Science 326, 1683–1685 (2009).

A journal article with 6 or more authors

Furnes, H., Banerjee, N. R., Muehlenbachs, K., Staudigel, H. & de Wit, M. Early life recorded in archean pillow lavas. Science 304, 578–581 (2004).

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

McBee, J. Mastering Microsoft® Exchange Server 2007 SP1. (Wiley Publishing, Inc., Indianapolis, IN, USA, 2009).

An edited book

Flexibility in Modern Business Law: A Comparative Assessment. (Springer Japan, Tokyo, 2016).

A chapter in an edited book

Fultz, B. & Howe, J. Inelastic Electron Scattering and Spectroscopy. in Transmission Electron Microscopy and Diffractometry of Materials (ed. Howe, J.) 181–236 (Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, 2013).

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 Nature Neuroscience.

Blog post

Andrews, R. China Will Launch The World’s First Quantum Satellite This July. IFLScience https://www.iflscience.com/physics/china-will-launch-unhackable-quantum-satellite-july/ (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

Government Accountability Office. Energy Management: Technology Development Program Taking Action to Address Problems. (1996).

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Foster, R. L. The Perceptions of Language Minority Parents Regarding Informed Consent in the Special Education Process. (George Washington University, Washington, DC, 2016).

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

Shear, M. D. & Savage, C. White House Lands 3 Punches Against Gay Rights in One Day. New York Times A1 (2017).

In-text citations

References should be cited in the text by sequential numbers in superscript:

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	Nature Neuroscience
Abbreviation	Nat. Neurosci.
ISSN (print)	1097-6256
ISSN (online)	1546-1726
Scope	General Neuroscience