How to format your references using the Nature Reviews Neuroscience citation style

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

Brock, J. D. Chemistry. Watching atoms move. Science 315, 609–610 (2007).

A journal article with 2 authors

Youngs, H. & Somerville, C. Plant science. Best practices for biofuels. Science 344, 1095–1096 (2014).

A journal article with 3 authors

Sharma, B., Mandani, S. & Sarma, T. K. Biogenic growth of alloys and core-shell nanostructures using urease as a nanoreactor at ambient conditions. Sci. Rep. 3, 2601 (2013).

A journal article with 6 or more authors

Fröhlich, A. et al. IL-21R on T cells is critical for sustained functionality and control of chronic viral infection. Science 324, 1576–1580 (2009).

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

El-Reedy, M. A. Construction Management for Industrial Projects. (John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2011).

An edited book

Budd, A. CSS Mastery: Advanced Web Standards Solutions. (Apress, 2009).

A chapter in an edited book

Kantert, J., Bernard, Y., Klejnowski, L. & Müller-Schloer, C. Estimation of Reward and Decision Making for Trust-Adaptive Agents in Normative Environments. in Architecture of Computing Systems – ARCS 2014: 27th International Conference, Lübeck, Germany, February 25-28, 2014. Proceedings (eds. Maehle, E., Römer, K., Karl, W. & Tovar, E.) 49–59 (Springer International Publishing, 2014).

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 Reviews Neuroscience.

Blog post

Andrew, E. India: The Pharmacy Of The World Where ‘Crazy Drug combinations’ Go Unregulated. IFLScience (2015).

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. Special Education: Federal Actions Can Assist States in Improving Postsecondary Outcomes for Youth. (2003).

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Tran, L. N. Low-cost vehicle remote diagnostic system. (California State University, Long Beach, 2013).

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

Crow, K. In Unlikely Urban Shadows, A Shopping Haven Takes Root. New York Times 146 (2003).

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 Reviews Neuroscience
Abbreviation	Nat. Rev. Neurosci.
ISSN (print)	1471-003X
ISSN (online)	1471-0048
Scope	General Neuroscience