How to format your references using the The Journal of Neuroscience citation style

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

Gibson DR (2012) Nuclear deterrence: decisions at the brink. Nature 487:27–29.

A journal article with 2 authors

Waddell S, Quinn WG (2001) Neurobiology. Learning how a fruit fly forgets. Science 293:1271–1272.

A journal article with 3 authors

Johnson CH, Egli M, Stewart PL (2008) Structural insights into a circadian oscillator. Science 322:697–701.

A journal article with 20 or more authors

Xie S, Shan X-F, Shang K, Xu H, He J, Cai Z-G (2014) Relevance of LIG4 gene polymorphisms with cancer susceptibility: evidence from a meta-analysis. Sci Rep 4:6630.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Teodorescu P, Stănescu N-D, Pandrea N (2013) Numerical Analysis with Applications in Mechanics and Engineering. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

An edited book

Bello F, Cotin S eds. (2014) Biomedical Simulation: 6th International Symposium, ISBMS 2014, Strasbourg, France, October 16-17, 2014. Proceedings. Cham: Springer International Publishing.

A chapter in an edited book

Rabhi FA, Rana OF, Guabtni A, Benatallah B (2009) A User-Driven Environment for Financial Market Data Analysis. In: Enterprise Applications and Services in the Finance Industry: 4th International Workshop, FinanceCom 2008, Paris, France, December 13, 2008. Revised Papers (Kundisch D, Veit DJ, Weitzel T, Weinhardt C, eds), pp 64–77 Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer.

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 The Journal of Neuroscience.

Blog post

Hale T (2016) Purps The Penguin Gets A New 3D-Printed Boot To Help With Her Injury. IFLScience Available at: https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/purps-the-penguin-gets-a-new-3dprinted-boot-to-help-with-her-injury/ [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) Traffic Congestion: Trends, Measures, and Effects. 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

Davidson JM (2010) Transitional age youth—a program expansion to enhance existing services in Sonoma County: A grant-writing project.

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

Vecsey G (2010) Champion’s March to Greatness Appears Far From Done. New York Times:B12.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Gibson, 2012).
This sentence cites two references (Waddell and Quinn, 2001; Gibson, 2012).

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

Two authors: (Waddell and Quinn, 2001)
Three or more authors: (Xie et al., 2014)

About the journal

Full journal title	The Journal of Neuroscience
Abbreviation	J. Neurosci.
ISSN (print)	0270-6474
ISSN (online)	1529-2401
Scope	General Neuroscience