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

Nelson WJ (2003) Adaptation of core mechanisms to generate cell polarity. Nature 422:766–774.

A journal article with 2 authors

Weaver AJ, Hillaire-Marcel C (2004) Ocean science. Global warming and the next ice age. Science 304:400–402.

A journal article with 3 authors

Ivany LC, Patterson WP, Lohmann KC (2000) Cooler winters as a possible cause of mass extinctions at the Eocene/Oligocene boundary. Nature 407:887–890.

A journal article with 20 or more authors

Castelo-Branco M, Goebel R, Neuenschwander S, Singer W (2000) Neural synchrony correlates with surface segregation rules. Nature 405:685–689.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Costa PJ (2017) Applied Mathematics for the Analysis of Biomedical Data. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

An edited book

Wang XS, Cruz I, Delis A, Huang G eds. (2012) Web Information Systems Engineering - WISE 2012: 13th International Conference, Paphos, Cyprus, November 28-30, 2012. Proceedings. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer.

A chapter in an edited book

vanVliet PCJ, Hendrix PF (2004) Role of Fauna in Soil Physical Processes. In: Soil Biological Fertility: A Key to Sustainable Land Use in Agriculture (Abbott LK, Murphy DV, eds), pp 61–80. Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands.

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

Davis J (2015) Chimps Manage Facial Recognition In A Similar Way To Humans. IFLScience Available at: https://www.iflscience.com/brain/chimps-manage-facial-recognition-similar-way-humans/ [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) Meeting the Aging Aircraft Challenge: Status and Opportunities. 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

Sink RC (2010) Exploring a high school community relations and parent involvement program.

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

Barron J (2017) A Floor of a World Trade Center Tower Is Splashed With Graffiti, by Invitation. New York Times:A20.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Nelson, 2003).
This sentence cites two references (Nelson, 2003; Weaver and Hillaire-Marcel, 2004).

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

Two authors: (Weaver and Hillaire-Marcel, 2004)
Three or more authors: (Castelo-Branco et al., 2000)

About the journal

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