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

DeWeerdt, S. Microbiome: A complicated relationship status. Nature 508, S61-3 (2014).

A journal article with 2 authors

Cyranoski, D. & Chou, I.-H. Winds of change blow away the cobwebs on campus. Nature 429, 210–214 (2004).

A journal article with 3 authors

Ofstad, T. A., Zuker, C. S. & Reiser, M. B. Visual place learning in Drosophila melanogaster. Nature 474, 204–207 (2011).

A journal article with 6 or more authors

Pallecchi, E. et al. High Electron Mobility in Epitaxial Graphene on 4H-SiC(0001) via post-growth annealing under hydrogen. Sci. Rep. 4, 4558 (2014).

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Bragg, S. M. Controllership. (John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2009).

An edited book

Sports Injuries: Prevention, Diagnosis, Treatment and Rehabilitation. (Springer, 2015).

A chapter in an edited book

Haddad, S. A. P. & Serdijn, W. A. Optimal State Space Descriptions. in Ultra Low-Power Biomedical Signal Processing: An Analog Wavelet Filter Approach for Pacemakers (ed. Serdijn, W. A.) 75–94 (Springer Netherlands, 2009).

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. Bacterial Colonies Alternate Feeding Times To Survive Bad Times. IFLScience (2017).

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. Transportation Infrastructure: Issues for Congressional Consideration During Reauthorization of Surface Transportation Programs. (1991).

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Moncur, H. B. Exploring primary caregivers’ perceptions of the effects of secondhand marijuana smoke on children: A quantitative study. (California State University, Long Beach, 2014).

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

Douglas Stone, A. & Schwab-Stone, M. Why College Is Not Home. New York Times ED21 (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

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