How to format your references using the Practical Neurology citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Practical Neurology. 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 reference managers.
BibTeX	BibTeX styles 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

Gomez H. Astrophysics: Survival of the largest. Nature. 2014;511:296–7.

A journal article with 2 authors

Pevzner P, Shamir R. Computing has changed biology--biology education must catch up. Science. 2009;325:541–2.

A journal article with 3 authors

Roditi HA, Fisher NS, Sañudo-Wilhelmy SA. Uptake of dissolved organic carbon and trace elements by zebra mussels. Nature. 2000;407:78–80.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Lu XL, Lu QH, Li Y, et al. Gradient confinement induced uniform tensile ductility in metallic glass. Sci Rep. 2013;3:3319.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Rodda HJE, Little MA. Understanding Mathematical and Statistical Techniques in Hydrology. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd 2015.

An edited book

Kravets A, Shcherbakov M, Kultsova M, et al., editors. Knowledge-Based Software Engineering: 11th Joint Conference, JCKBSE 2014, Volgograd, Russia, September 17-20, 2014. Proceedings. Cham: Springer International Publishing 2014.

A chapter in an edited book

Burkhardt CE, Leventhal JJ. Time-Dependent States in One Dimension. In: Leventhal JJ, ed. Foundations of Quantum Physics. New York, NY: Springer 2008:1–29.

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 Practical Neurology.

Blog post

Andrew E. Where Did HIV Come From? IFLScience. 2014. https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/new-insights-origin-hiv-pandemic/ (accessed 30 October 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. Regulatory Guidance Processes: Selected Departments Could Strengthen Internal Control and Dissemination Practices. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office 2015.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Salam S. Interplay between Fines Content and Strength Characteristics of CA 6 and CA 2 Crushed Limestone Aggregate. 2017.

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

Crow K. Old Wish List: More for Pupils; New List: Keep What We Have. New York Times. 2002;146.

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	Practical Neurology
Abbreviation	Pract. Neurol.
ISSN (print)	1474-7758
ISSN (online)	1474-7766
Scope	General Medicine Clinical Neurology