How to format your references using the Molecular and Cellular Neuroscience citation style

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

Bertrand, G., 2004. Chemistry. The modest undressing of a silicon center. Science 305, 783–785.

A journal article with 2 authors

Oreskes, N., Conway, E.M., 2010. Defeating the merchants of doubt. Nature 465, 686–687.

A journal article with 3 authors

Kayukawa, T., Tateishi, K., Shinoda, T., 2013. Establishment of a versatile cell line for juvenile hormone signaling analysis in Tribolium castaneum. Sci. Rep. 3, 1570.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Edwards, E.J., Osborne, C.P., Strömberg, C.A.E., Smith, S.A., C4 Grasses Consortium, Bond, W.J., Christin, P.-A., Cousins, A.B., Duvall, M.R., Fox, D.L., Freckleton, R.P., Ghannoum, O., Hartwell, J., Huang, Y., Janis, C.M., Keeley, J.E., Kellogg, E.A., Knapp, A.K., Leakey, A.D.B., Nelson, D.M., Saarela, J.M., Sage, R.F., Sala, O.E., Salamin, N., Still, C.J., Tipple, B., 2010. The origins of C4 grasslands: integrating evolutionary and ecosystem science. Science 328, 587–591.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Doyle, J.F., 2005. Modern Experimental Stress Analysis. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, Chichester, UK.

An edited book

Jin, H., Rana, O.F., Pan, Y., Prasanna, V.K. (Eds.), 2007. Algorithms and Architectures for Parallel Processing: 7th International Conference, ICA3PP 2007, Hangzhou, China, June 11-14, 2007. Proceedings, Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg.

A chapter in an edited book

Kumar, A., Gupta, A., Azooz, M.M., Sharma, S., Ahmad, P., Dames, J., 2013. Genetic Approaches to Improve Salinity Tolerance in Plants, in: Ahmad, P., Azooz, M.M., Prasad, M.N.V. (Eds.), Salt Stress in Plants: Signalling, Omics and Adaptations. Springer, New York, NY, pp. 63–78.

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 Molecular and Cellular Neuroscience.

Blog post

Fang, J., 2016. Why Is Panda Poop Gooey In The Summertime? [WWW Document]. IFLScience. URL https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/what-are-there-gooey-masses-panda-poop/ (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. Requirements for Recurring Reports to the Congress (No. PAD-80-49). 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

Blandin, N.M., 2008. Re-conceptualizing leadership for an era of complexity and uncertainty: A case study of leadership in a complex adaptive system (Doctoral dissertation). George Washington University, Washington, DC.

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

Pendleton, I., 1934. THE HIGHWAY BEAUTIFUL; Private Citizens and State Officials Cooperate to Create Natural Scenery Along Paved Roads. New York Times DRAMA SCREEN MUSIC RADIO FASHIONS ARTX12.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Bertrand, 2004).
This sentence cites two references (Bertrand, 2004; Oreskes and Conway, 2010).

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

Two authors: (Oreskes and Conway, 2010)
Three or more authors: (Edwards et al., 2010)

About the journal

Full journal title	Molecular and Cellular Neuroscience
Abbreviation	Mol. Cell. Neurosci.
ISSN (print)	1044-7431
Scope	Cell Biology Molecular Biology Cellular and Molecular Neuroscience