How to format your references using the BMC Neuroscience citation style

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

1. Portman ME. You’ll be OK. Science. 2015;348:1282.

A journal article with 2 authors

1. Nadeau JA, Sack FD. Control of stomatal distribution on the Arabidopsis leaf surface. Science. 2002;296:1697–700.

A journal article with 3 authors

1. Ghaffari HO, Nasseri MHB, Young RP. Faulting of rocks in a three-dimensional stress field by micro-anticracks. Sci Rep. 2014;4:5011.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

1. Pei S, Muchnik L, Andrade JS Jr, Zheng Z, Makse HA. Searching for superspreaders of information in real-world social media. Sci Rep. 2014;4:5547.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

1. Langton R. Stability and Control of Aircraft Systems. Chichester, England: John Wiley & Sons Ltd; 2006.

An edited book

1. Kibbe MR, LeMaire SA, editors. Success in Academic Surgery: Basic Science. London: Springer; 2014.

A chapter in an edited book

1. Larouche P, d’Entremont A, Thompson G, Mulpuri K. Fundamental Concepts in Evidence-Based Medicine. In: van de Kelft E, editor. Surgery of the Spine and Spinal Cord: A Neurosurgical Approach. Cham: Springer International Publishing; 2016. p. 65–75.

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 BMC Neuroscience.

Blog post

1. Davis J. Alaskan Bears And Wolves In Wildlife Refuges To Be Hunted Again After Republican Vote. IFLScience. 2017. https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/alaskan-bears-and-wolves-in-wildlife-refuges-to-be-hunted-again-after-republican-vote/. Accessed 30 Oct 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

1. Government Accountability Office. Financial Management Systems: HUD Needs to Address Management and Governance Weaknesses That Jeopardize Its Modernization Efforts. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 2016.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

1. Veru PT. The National-Dobro Guitar Company: How the resonator guitar survived the age of electric amplification. Doctoral dissertation. George Washington University; 2009.

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

1. Kelly M. The Winners Shift Gears: What Now? New York Times. 1992;:B3.

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	BMC Neuroscience
Abbreviation	BMC Neurosci.
ISSN (online)	1471-2202
Scope	General Neuroscience Cellular and Molecular Neuroscience