How to format your references using the Molecular Neurobiology citation style

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

Smaglik P (2005) The places to be. Nature 433:551

A journal article with 2 authors

Aratyn-Schaus Y, Gardel ML (2008) Biophysics. Clutch dynamics. Science 322:1646–1647

A journal article with 3 authors

Chookajorn T, Murdoch HA, Schuh CA (2012) Design of stable nanocrystalline alloys. Science 337:951–954

A journal article with 5 or more authors

Gwiazda J, Ong E, Held R, Thorn F (2000) Myopia and ambient night-time lighting. Nature 404:144

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Shelby AM, McKune CM (2014) Small Animal Anesthesia Techniques. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, Chichester, UK

An edited book

Loera JAD (2010) Triangulations: Structures for Algorithms and Applications. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

A chapter in an edited book

Alfred W, John A (2006) Stigmergic Navigation for Multi-Agent Teams in Complex Environments. In: Crina G, Vitorino R (eds) Stigmergic Optimization. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, pp 85–116

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 Neurobiology.

Blog post

Hale T (2017) Watch As A Volcanic Eruption Gets Completely Upstaged By A Streaking Meteor. In: IFLScience. 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

Government Accountability Office (1999) Y2K Computing Challenge: Day One Planning and Operations Guide. 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

Lee J (2012) The Effects of Leadership Behavior on Workplace Harassment, Employee Outcomes, and Organizational Effectiveness in Small Businesses. Doctoral dissertation, George Washington University

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

McMORROW R, Forsythe M (2017) Chinese Tech Tycoon to Leave Troubled Company. New York Times B4

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	Molecular Neurobiology
Abbreviation	Mol. Neurobiol.
ISSN (print)	0893-7648
ISSN (online)	1559-1182
Scope	Cellular and Molecular Neuroscience