How to format your references using the Neuroscience citation style

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

Boyd P (2004) Ocean science. Ironing out algal issues in the Southern Ocean. Science 304:396–397.

A journal article with 2 authors

Sigman DM, Boyle EA (2000) Glacial/interglacial variations in atmospheric carbon dioxide. Nature 407:859–869.

A journal article with 3 authors

Alford RA, Dixon PM, Pechmann JH (2001) Ecology. Global amphibian population declines. Nature 412:499–500.

A journal article with 20 or more authors

Holden LG, Prochnow C, Chang YP, Bransteitter R, Chelico L, Sen U, Stevens RC, Goodman MF, Chen XS (2008) Crystal structure of the anti-viral APOBEC3G catalytic domain and functional implications. Nature 456:121–124.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Stewart JM (2001) Managing for World Class Safety. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

An edited book

Serrano M, Hage J eds. (2016) Trends in Functional Programming: 16th International Symposium, TFP 2015, Sophia Antipolis, France, June 3-5, 2015. Revised Selected Papers. Cham: Springer International Publishing.

A chapter in an edited book

Fernandes C, Sarmento M, Matias A (2013) Evaluation of the Interrailers’ Satisfaction Regarding the Tourism Services and Activities in Italy, Greece and Croatia. In: Quantitative Methods in Tourism Economics (Matias Á, Nijkamp P, Sarmento M, eds), pp 59–77. Heidelberg: Physica-Verlag HD.

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 Neuroscience.

Blog post

Hamilton K (2017) Scientists Create An Artificial Synapse That Can Learn Autonomously. IFLScience Available at: https://www.iflscience.com/brain/scientists-create-an-artificial-synapse-that-can-learn-autonomously/ [Accessed October 30, 2018].

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 (1989) Implementation Status of the Federal Technology Transfer Act of 1986. Washington, DC: 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

Hrivnak GA (2009) Extending a model of leader -member exchange development: Individual and dyadic effects of personality, similarity and liking.

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

Pilon M (2012) Tae Kwon Do Issue Gets Britain’s Attention. New York Times:B14.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Boyd, 2004).
This sentence cites two references (Sigman and Boyle, 2000; Boyd, 2004).

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

Two authors: (Sigman and Boyle, 2000)
Three or more authors: (Holden et al., 2008)

About the journal

Full journal title	Neuroscience
Abbreviation	Neuroscience
ISSN (print)	0306-4522
ISSN (online)	1873-7544
Scope	General Neuroscience

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