How to format your references using the Neuron citation style

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

Klein, J. (2000). Smart polymer solutions. Nature 405, 745, 747.

A journal article with 2 authors

Barnes, M.J., and Powrie, F. (2011). Immunology. The gut’s Clostridium cocktail. Science 331, 289–290.

A journal article with 3 authors

Huang, C.Y., Ayliffe, M.A., and Timmis, J.N. (2003). Direct measurement of the transfer rate of chloroplast DNA into the nucleus. Nature 422, 72–76.

A journal article with 11 or more authors

Kalas, P., Graham, J.R., Chiang, E., Fitzgerald, M.P., Clampin, M., Kite, E.S., Stapelfeldt, K., Marois, C., and Krist, J. (2008). Optical images of an exosolar planet 25 light-years from Earth. Science 322, 1345–1348.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Arifin, S.M.N., Madey, G.R., and Collins, F.H. (2016). Spatial Agent-Based Simulation Modeling in Public Health (John Wiley & Sons, Inc).

An edited book

Chander, P., Drèze, J., Lovell, C.K., and Mintz, J. eds. (2006). Public goods, environmental externalities and fiscal competition (Springer US).

A chapter in an edited book

Amiruzzaman, M., Abdullah-Al-Wadud, M., and Chung, Y. (2010). An Analysis of Syndrome Coding. In Information Security and Assurance: 4th International Conference, ISA 2010, Miyazaki, Japan, June 23-25, 2010. Proceedings Communications in Computer and Information Science., S. K. Bandyopadhyay, W. Adi, T.-H. Kim, and Y. Xiao, eds. (Springer), pp. 37–50.

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 Neuron.

Blog post

Luntz, S. (2017). Pores On The “Platypus Of Microbiology” May Reveal How Complex Life Evolved. IFLScience.

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 (2008). District of Columbia Public Schools: While Early Reform Efforts Tackle Critical Management Issues, a District-Wide Strategic Education Plan Would Help Guide Long-Term Efforts (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

Cannon, M.P. (2013). Cenozoic kinematics of the Little Pine fault, Santa Maria Basin, California.

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

Wagner, J. (2017). Cubs Send Nationals to Their Latest Early Exit. New York Times, B10.

In-text citations

References should be cited in the text by sequential numbers in superscript:

This sentence cites one reference ².
This sentence cites two references ^2,4.
This sentence cites four references ^2,4,6,8.

About the journal

Full journal title	Neuron
Abbreviation	Neuron
ISSN (print)	0896-6273
ISSN (online)	1097-4199
Scope	General Neuroscience