How to format your references using the Brain Research citation style

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

PaperpileThe citation style is built in and you can choose it in Settings > Citation Style or Paperpile > Citation Style in Google Docs.
EndNoteDownload the output style file
Mendeley, Zotero, Papers, and othersThe style is either built in or you can download a CSL file that is supported by most reference managers.
BibTeXBibTeX 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
Chapman, C.R., 2013. Astronomy. Calibrating asteroid impact. Science 342, 1051–1052.
A journal article with 2 authors
Junttila, M.R., de Sauvage, F.J., 2013. Influence of tumour micro-environment heterogeneity on therapeutic response. Nature 501, 346–354.
A journal article with 3 authors
Meza, L.R., Das, S., Greer, J.R., 2014. Strong, lightweight, and recoverable three-dimensional ceramic nanolattices. Science 345, 1322–1326.
A journal article with 4 or more authors
Chakrabarty, D., Morgan, E.H., Muno, M.P., Galloway, D.K., Wijnands, R., Van Der Klis, M., Markwardt, C.B., 2003. Nuclear-powered millisecond pulsars and the maximum spin frequency of neutron stars. Nature 424, 42–44.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book
Schaik, C.P.V., 2015. The Primate Origins of Human Nature. John Wiley & Sons, Inc, Hoboken, NJ.
An edited book
Jenssen, T. (Ed.), 2013. Glances at Renewable and Sustainable Energy: Principles, approaches and methodologies for an ambiguous benchmark, Green Energy and Technology. Springer, London.
A chapter in an edited book
Catthoor, F., Raghavan, P., Lambrechts, A., Jayapala, M., Kritikakou, A., Absar, J., 2010. Clustered L0 (Loop) Buffer Organization and Combination with Data Clusters, in: Raghavan, P., Lambrechts, A., Jayapala, M., Kritikakou, A., Absar, J. (Eds.), Ultra-Low Energy Domain-Specific Instruction-Set Processors. Springer Netherlands, Dordrecht, pp. 115–141.

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 Research.

Blog post
Andrew, E., 2015. Astronomers Have Spotted Something Very, Very Strange Surrounding A Distant Star [WWW Document]. IFLScience. URL https://www.iflscience.com/space/milky-ways-most-mysterious-star/ (accessed 10.30.18).

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, 1980. Review of the District of Columbia’s Automatic Data Processing Operations (No. GGD-80-103). 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
Lai, J.-P., 2008. Phosphatase and Tensin Homolog Deleted on Chromosome Ten (PTEN) As A Molecular Target in Lung Epithelial Wound Repair and Protection (Doctoral dissertation). Ohio State University, Columbus, OH.

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
Crow, K., 2002. I Say Yip-Yip, You Say Ruff-Ruff: Small Dogs Lobby for Own Dog Run. New York Times 145.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Chapman, 2013).
This sentence cites two references (Chapman, 2013; Junttila and de Sauvage, 2013).

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

  • Two authors: (Junttila and de Sauvage, 2013)
  • Three or more authors: (Chakrabarty et al., 2003)

About the journal

Full journal titleBrain Research
AbbreviationBrain Res.
ISSN (print)0006-8993
ScopeDevelopmental Biology
Molecular Biology
Clinical Neurology
General Neuroscience

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