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

Akeson, R. Planetary science. Watery disks. Science 334, 316–317 (2011).

A journal article with 2 authors

O’Higgins, P. & Elton, S. Anthropology. Walking on trees. Science 316, 1292–1294 (2007).

A journal article with 3 authors

Baron-Cohen, S., Knickmeyer, R. C. & Belmonte, M. K. Sex differences in the brain: implications for explaining autism. Science 310, 819–823 (2005).

A journal article with 6 or more authors

Coqueugniot, H., Hublin, J.-J., Veillon, F., Houët, F. & Jacob, T. Early brain growth in Homo erectus and implications for cognitive ability. Nature 431, 299–302 (2004).

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Meyr, H., Moeneclaey, M. & Fechtel, S. A. Digital Communication Receivers: Synchronization, Channel Estimation, and Signal Processing. (John Wiley & Sons, Inc., New York, USA, 2001).

An edited book

Tveito, A. Elements of Scientific Computing. vol. 7 (Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, 2010).

A chapter in an edited book

Shahid, A., Wilkinson, K., Marcu, S. & Shapiro, C. M. Athens Insomnia Scale (AIS). in STOP, THAT and One Hundred Other Sleep Scales (eds. Shahid, A., Wilkinson, K., Marcu, S. & Shapiro, C. M.) 53–54 (Springer, New York, NY, 2012).

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

Luntz, S. Probe Spots 101 Geysers On Icy Saturn Moon. IFLScience https://www.iflscience.com/space/probe-spots-101-geysers-icy-saturn-moon/ (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. Aviation Safety: FAA’s Safety Efforts Generally Strong but Face Challenges. (2006).

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Alexander, M. Reasoning processes used by paramedics to solve clinical problems. (George Washington University, Washington, DC, 2009).

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 the East Village, an Unusual Bid to Fix Up a Firehouse . . . 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