How to format your references using the Neural Development citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Neural Development. 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

1. Pickett G. Superfluidity. A new twist to an old story. Nature. 2000;404:450–1.

A journal article with 2 authors

1. Schrag DP, Alley RB. Physics. Ancient lessons for our future climate. Science. 2004;306:821–2.

A journal article with 3 authors

1. Pocock MJO, Evans DM, Memmott J. The robustness and restoration of a network of ecological networks. Science. 2012;335:973–7.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

1. Perraki A, DeFalco TA, Derbyshire P, Avila J, Séré D, Sklenar J, et al. Author Correction: Phosphocode-dependent functional dichotomy of a common co-receptor in plant signalling. Nature. 2018;

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

1. Parke RD. Future Families. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons; 2013.

An edited book

1. Bailey DH. Pi: The Next Generation: A Sourcebook on the Recent History of Pi and Its Computation. Borwein JM, editor. Cham: Springer International Publishing; 2016.

A chapter in an edited book

1. Adaricheva K, Nation JB. Lattices of Algebraic Subsets and Implicational Classes. In: Grätzer G, Wehrung F, editors. Lattice Theory: Special Topics and Applications: Volume 2. Cham: Springer International Publishing; 2016. p. 103–51.

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 Neural Development.

Blog post

1. Andrews R. Chernobyl Set To Become Gigantic Solar Power Park. IFLScience. 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

1. Government Accountability Office. Heroin Hotline. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 1972 Sep. Report No.: B-176833.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

1. Baudy AR. Efficacy of glucocorticoids in muscular dystrophy: Signaling, hormonal activities, and muscle inflammation [Doctoral dissertation]. [Washington, DC]: George Washington University; 2010.

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

1. Arango T. Food Poisoning Sickens Hundreds of Iraqis at U.N.-Run Camp. New York Times. 2017 Jun 13;A9.

In-text citations

References should be cited in the text by sequential numbers in square brackets:

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	Neural Development
Abbreviation	Neural Dev.
ISSN (online)	1749-8104
Scope	Developmental Neuroscience