How to format your references using the Neurosignals citation style

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

McQuate GT. Green light synergistally enhances male sweetpotato weevil response to sex pheromone. Sci Rep. 2014 Mar;4:4499.

A journal article with 2 authors

Winkowski DE, Knudsen EI. Top-down gain control of the auditory space map by gaze control circuitry in the barn owl. Nature. 2006 Jan;439(7074):336–9.

A journal article with 3 authors

Kao MH, Doupe AJ, Brainard MS. Contributions of an avian basal ganglia-forebrain circuit to real-time modulation of song. Nature. 2005 Feb;433(7026):638–43.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Wada M, Suzuki M, Takaki A, Miyao M, Spence C, Kansaku K. Spatio-temporal processing of tactile stimuli in autistic children. Sci Rep. 2014 Aug;4:5985.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Xu QA, Madden TL. Analytical Methods for Therapeutic Drug Monitoring and Toxicology. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.; 2011.

An edited book

Pandey JK, Takagi H, Nakagaito AN, Kim H-J, editors. Handbook of Polymer Nanocomposites. Processing, Performance and Application: Volume C: Polymer Nanocomposites of Cellulose Nanoparticles. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer; 2015.

A chapter in an edited book

Hu B, Raidl GR. Effective Neighborhood Structures for the Generalized Traveling Salesman Problem. In: Hemert J van, Cotta C, editors. Evolutionary Computation in Combinatorial Optimization: 8th European Conference, EvoCOP 2008, Naples, Italy, March 26-28, 2008. Proceedings. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer; 2008; pp 36–47.

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 Neurosignals.

Blog post

Andrews R. Hidden World Discovered Buried Beneath Antarctica [Internet]. IFLScience. 2016 May

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. Freight Railroad Safety: Hours of Service Changes Have Increased Rest Time, but More Can Be Done to Address Fatigue Risks. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 2011.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Messian NM. The Spiral of Time: A Path to the Soul—Jewish Mystical and Depth Psychological Perspectives. 2012

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

Greenhouse L. Oral Dissents Give Ginsburg A New Voice. New York Times. 2007 May;A1.

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	Neurosignals
Abbreviation	Neurosignals
ISSN (print)	1424-862X
ISSN (online)	1424-8638
Scope	Cellular and Molecular Neuroscience Developmental Neuroscience Neurology

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