How to format your references using the Neural Networks citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Neural Networks. 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	Download the output style file
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

Dyson, P. J. (2009). Journal club. A chemist highlights promising organometallic drugs. Nature, 458(7237), 389.

A journal article with 2 authors

Sprent, J., & Tough, D. F. (2001). T cell death and memory. Science (New York, N.Y.), 293(5528), 245–248.

A journal article with 3 authors

Spencer, J. P., Dineva, E., & Smith, L. B. (2009). Comment on “Infants’ perseverative search errors are induced by pragmatic misinterpretation.” Science (New York, N.Y.), 325(5948), 1624; author reply 1624.

A journal article with 8 or more authors

Vemula, P. K., Kohler, J. E., Blass, A., Williams, M., Xu, C., Chen, L., Jadhav, S. R., John, G., Soybel, D. I., & Karp, J. M. (2014). Self-assembled hydrogel fibers for sensing the multi-compartment intracellular milieu. Scientific Reports, 4, 4466.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Shaw, M. T. (2011). Introduction to Polymer Rheology. John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

An edited book

Hanus, M. (Ed.). (2009). Logic-Based Program Synthesis and Transformation: 18th International Symposium, LOPSTR 2008, Valencia, Spain, July 17-18, 2008, Revised Selected Papers (Vol. 5438). Springer.

A chapter in an edited book

Bautista, E., Muñoz, J. L., & Echávarri, J. (2010). Juanelo (1501–1585). In M. Ceccarelli (Ed.), Distinguished Figures in Mechanism and Machine Science: Their Contributions and Legacies, Part 2 (pp. 95–110). Springer Netherlands.

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 Networks.

Blog post

Fang, J. (2016, May 27). Harbor Porpoises Must Eat All The Time To Live. IFLScience; IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/harbor-porpoises-must-eat-all-time-to-live/

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. (1986). DOD Schools: Funding and Operating Alternatives for Education of Dependents (HRD-87-16). U.S. Government Printing Office.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Herrera, K. (2010). Improved transportation for older adult volunteers: A grant proposal [Doctoral dissertation]. California State University, Long Beach.

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

Kishkovsky, S. (2005, July 20). Bomb Near a Police Vehicle Kills 13 in North Chechnya. New York Times, A4.

In-text citations

References should be cited in the text by name and year in parentheses:

This sentence cites one reference (Dyson, 2009).
This sentence cites two references (Dyson, 2009; Sprent & Tough, 2001).

Here are examples of in-text citations with multiple authors:

Two authors: (Sprent & Tough, 2001)
Three authors: (Spencer et al., 2009)
6 or more authors: (Vemula et al., 2014)

About the journal

Full journal title	Neural Networks
Abbreviation	Neural Netw.
ISSN (print)	0893-6080
Scope	Artificial Intelligence Cognitive Neuroscience