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

Wittrock, U. Laryngeally echolocating bats. Nature 466, E6; discussion E7 (2010).

A journal article with 2 authors

Davies, I. W. & Welch, C. J. Looking forward in pharmaceutical process chemistry. Science 325, 701–704 (2009).

A journal article with 3 authors

Rhew, R. C., Miller, B. R. & Weiss, R. F. Natural methyl bromide and methyl chloride emissions from coastal salt marshes. Nature 403, 292–295 (2000).

A journal article with 6 or more authors

Liu, H. et al. Stellated Ag-Pt bimetallic nanoparticles: an effective platform for catalytic activity tuning. Sci. Rep. 4, 3969 (2014).

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Xiu, L. Nanometer Frequency Synthesis Beyond the Phase-Locked Loop. (John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ, 2012).

An edited book

Šalak, A. Manganese in Powder Metallurgy Steels. (Cambridge International Science Publishing Ltd., Cambridge, 2012).

A chapter in an edited book

Bujalance, E., Cirre, F. J., Gamboa, J. M. & Gromadzki, G. Symmetry Types of Some Families of Riemann Surfaces. in Symmetries of Compact Riemann Surfaces (eds. Cirre, F. J., Gamboa, J. M. & Gromadzki, G.) 65–90 (Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, 2010).

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. Man Pronounces Name of Longest Protein. IFLScience https://www.iflscience.com/chemistry/man-pronounces-name-longest-protein/ (2014).

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. Immigrant Education: Federal Funding Has Not Kept Pace With Student Increases. (1994).

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Lawrence, B. H. Evaluation of a cultural practice and 2,4-D-based herbicide programs for glyphosateresistant Palmer amaranth management. (Mississippi State University, Mississippi State, MS, 2015).

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

Leland, J. Starring in Someone Else’s Film. New York Times MB4 (2016).

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