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

Blatt R (2000) Push-button entanglement. Nature 404:231–232.

A journal article with 2 authors

Wu J, Izpisua Belmonte JC (2014) Stem cells: A designer’s guide to pluripotency. Nature 516:172–173.

A journal article with 3 authors

Maiorano D, Moreau J, Méchali M (2000) XCDT1 is required for the assembly of pre-replicative complexes in Xenopus laevis. Nature 404:622–625.

A journal article with 20 or more authors

Ming L, Jin F, Huang P, Luo H, Liu W, Zhang L, Yuan W, Zhang Y, Jin Y (2014) Licochalcone A up-regulates of FasL in mesenchymal stem cells to strengthen bone formation and increase bone mass. Sci Rep 4:7209.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Korst J, Pronk V (2006) Multimedia Storage and Retrieval. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

An edited book

Bodlaender HL, Italiano GF eds. (2013) Algorithms – ESA 2013: 21st Annual European Symposium, Sophia Antipolis, France, September 2-4, 2013. Proceedings. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer.

A chapter in an edited book

Deligiannakis A, Kotidis Y (2008) Exploiting Spatio-temporal Correlations for Data Processing in Sensor Networks. In: GeoSensor Networks: Second International Conference, GSN 2006, Boston, MA, USA, October 1-3, 2006, Revised Selected and Invited Papers (Nittel S, Labrinidis A, Stefanidis A, eds), pp 45–65 Lecture Notes in Computer Science. 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) There Are Rumors That Russia Are Developing A Space-Cruising Nuclear Bomber. IFLScience Available at: https://www.iflscience.com/technology/there-are-rumors-that-russia-are-developing-a-spacecruising-nuclear-bomber/ [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 (1972) Drug Abuse Control Program Activities in the Philippines. 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

O’Neil DM (2013) Climate frequencies of the early Holocene from Foy Lake, Montana.

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

Neuman W (2014) Colombia’s President Reinstates a Mayor He Ousted. New York Times:A10.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Blatt, 2000).
This sentence cites two references (Blatt, 2000; Wu and Izpisua Belmonte, 2014).

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

Two authors: (Wu and Izpisua Belmonte, 2014)
Three or more authors: (Ming 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