How to format your references using the Visual Neuroscience citation style

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

Smaglik P (2002). An electoral lecture. Nature 420, 3.

A journal article with 2 authors

Ticozzi F & Viola L (2014). Quantum resources for purification and cooling: fundamental limits and opportunities. Sci Rep 4, 5192.

A journal article with 3 authors

Li C, Zhang T & Goldman DI (2013). A terradynamics of legged locomotion on granular media. Science 339, 1408–1412.

A journal article with 20 or more authors

Anderson TM, Neiwert WA, Kirk ML, Piccoli PMB, Schultz AJ, Koetzle TF, Musaev DG, Morokuma K, Cao R & Hill CL (2004). A late-transition metal oxo complex: K7Na9[O=PtIV(H2O)L2], L = [PW9O34]9-. Science 306, 2074–2077.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Sage AP & Rouse WB (2011). Economic Systems Analysis and Assessment. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ.

An edited book

Zheng V (2014). Gambling Dynamism: The Macao Miracleed. Wan P-S. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg.

A chapter in an edited book

Ding J & Yang B-Y (2013). Degree of Regularity for HFEv and HFEv-. In Post-Quantum Cryptography: 5th International Workshop, PQCrypto 2013, Limoges, France, June 4-7, 2013. Proceedings, ed. Gaborit P, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, pp. 52–66. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg.

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 Visual Neuroscience.

Blog post

Hamilton K (2015). Dog Sniffs Out Thyroid Cancer In Urine Samples. IFLScience.

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 (1996). Emergency Relief: Status of the Replacement of the Cypress Viaduct. U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC.

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 (Doctoral dissertation thesis). California State University, Long Beach, Long Beach, CA.

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

Taylor K (2015). Named Next President of N.Y.U., Oxford’s Leader Inherits Challenges. New York TimesA20.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Smaglik, 2002).
This sentence cites two references (Smaglik, 2002; Ticozzi & Viola, 2014).

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

Two authors: (Ticozzi & Viola, 2014)
Three or more authors: (Anderson et al., 2004)

About the journal

Full journal title	Visual Neuroscience
Abbreviation	Vis. Neurosci.
ISSN (print)	0952-5238
ISSN (online)	1469-8714
Scope	Physiology Sensory Systems