How to format your references using the The Lancet Neurology citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for The Lancet Neurology. 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	Find the style here: output styles overview
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. Blurred vision. Nature 2002; 420: A19, A21, A23.

A journal article with 2 authors

Etienne-Manneville S, Hall A. Rho GTPases in cell biology. Nature 2002; 420: 629–35.

A journal article with 3 authors

Xu X, Han F, Zhao Q. Homologies and homeotic transformation of the theropod ‘semilunate’ carpal. Sci Rep 2014; 4: 6042.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Michel P, Benz W, Tanga P, Richardson DC. Collisions and gravitational reaccumulation: forming asteroid families and satellites. Science 2001; 294: 1696–700.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Brodsky BS, Stanley B. The Dialectical Behavior Therapy Primer. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, 2013.

An edited book

Liu Z, editor. Essentials of Chinese Medicine: Essentials of Clinical Specialties in Chinese Medicine. London: Springer, 2009.

A chapter in an edited book

Liu C. QTL Mapping of Molecular Traits for Studies of Human Complex Diseases. In: Shugart YY, ed. Applied Computational Genomics. Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands, 2012: 61–82.

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 The Lancet Neurology.

Blog post

Andrew E. Mysterious Ovoid Structure in Martian Meteorite Looks Like A Cell. IFLScience. 2014; published online Aug 21.

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. Digests of Unpublished Decisions of the Comptroller General, Vol. II, No. 1. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1985.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Tahira A. Synthesis of Bivalent Organothiophosphate Inhibitors and Their Inhibition of Butyrylcholinesterase: Studies towards a Potential Treatment of Cognitive Loss Associated with Alzheimer’s Disease. 2017.

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

Qiu L. In Prime Time, a Rerun of the President’s Favorite Falsehoods. New York Times. 2017; : A14.

In-text citations

References should be cited in the text by sequential numbers in superscript:

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	The Lancet Neurology
Abbreviation	Lancet Neurol.
ISSN (print)	1474-4422
ISSN (online)	1474-4465
Scope	Clinical Neurology