How to format your references using the Brain and Language citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Brain and Language. 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

Russo, E. (2003). Success in an uneven market. Nature, 424(6948), 597.

A journal article with 2 authors

Kelley, D. H., & Ouellette, N. T. (2013). Emergent dynamics of laboratory insect swarms. Scientific Reports, 3, 1073.

A journal article with 3 authors

Domnisoru, C., Kinkhabwala, A. A., & Tank, D. W. (2013). Membrane potential dynamics of grid cells. Nature, 495(7440), 199–204.

A journal article with 21 or more authors

Yuki, K., Yoshida, Y., Inagaki, R., Hiai, H., & Noda, M. (2014). E-cadherin-downregulation and RECK-upregulation are coupled in the non-malignant epithelial cell line MCF10A but not in multiple carcinoma-derived cell lines. Scientific Reports, 4, 4568.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Castañeda, L. B., Arunachalam, V., & Dharmaraja, S. (2012). Introduction to Probability and Stochastic Processes with Applications. John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

An edited book

Masys, A. J. (Ed.). (2016). Applications of Systems Thinking and Soft Operations Research in Managing Complexity: From Problem Framing to Problem Solving (1st ed. 2016). Springer International Publishing.

A chapter in an edited book

Fabrègue, D., Landron, C., Béal, C., Kleber, X., Maire, E., & Bouzekri, M. (2011). Understanding the mechanical behaviour of a high manganese TWIP steel by the means of in situ 3D X ray tomography. In T. Proulx (Ed.), Optical Measurements, Modeling, and Metrology, Volume 5: Proceedings of the 2011 Annual Conference on Experimental and Applied Mechanics (pp. 27–32). 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 Brain and Language.

Blog post

Andrews, R. (2016, June 16). What Would Happen If Every Single Volcano In The World Erupted At Once? IFLScience. IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/environment/what-would-happen-if-every-single-volcano-in-the-world-erupted-at-once/

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. (1993). Federal Health Care: Increased Information System Sharing Could Improve Service, Reduce Costs (IMTEC-93-33BR). 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

Calderwood, A. (2014). Improving the singer’s understanding of bebop language: Transcription application [Doctoral dissertation]. California State University, Long Beach.

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

Greenhouse, L. (2008, June 14). Over Guantánamo, Justices Come Under Election-Year Spotlight. 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 (Russo, 2003).
This sentence cites two references (Kelley & Ouellette, 2013; Russo, 2003).

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

Two authors: (Kelley & Ouellette, 2013)
Three or more authors: (Yuki et al., 2014)

About the journal

Full journal title	Brain and Language
Abbreviation	Brain Lang.
ISSN (print)	0093-934X
Scope	Language and Linguistics Cognitive Neuroscience Experimental and Cognitive Psychology Linguistics and Language Speech and Hearing