Style for "Neuroscience Letters"

Joachim Blocher
Unfortunately I couldn't find a style for "Neuroscience Letters" in the Citation Style Repository.
The style is very similar to the "Elsevier (with titles)" style with one important difference: The list of references should be alphabetical and then numbered.

I'm not familiar with creating or changing styles. Has somebody a style for "Neuroscience letters" or can sombody help me to change the style?



Here the information from the journal's homepage:

Reference style
Text: Indicate references by number(s) in square brackets in line with the text. The actual authors
can be referred to, but the reference number(s) must always be given.
Example: "..... as demonstrated [3,6]. Barnaby and Jones [8] obtained a different result ...."
List: The list of references is arranged alphabetically and then numbered (numbers in square
brackets).
Examples:
Reference to a journal publication:
[1] J. van der Geer, J.A.J. Hanraads, R.A. Lupton, The art of writing a scientific article, J. Sci. Commun.
163 (2000) 51–59.
Reference to a book:
[2] W. Strunk Jr., E.B. White, The Elements of Style, third ed., Macmillan, New York, 1979.
Reference to a chapter in an edited book:
[3] G.R. Mettam, L.B. Adams, How to prepare an electronic version of your article, in: B.S. Jones, R.Z.
Smith (Eds.), Introduction to the Electronic Age, E-Publishing Inc., New York, 1999, pp. 281–304.
«1
  • adamsmith
    what do they mean by alphabetically? The list above doesn't look alphabetical to me: Strunk comes before Mettam, e.g.
  • Joachim Blocher
    Indeed the examples are confusing. I rechecked an article of the journal, they want to sort the references alpabetical by the last name of the first author and then number the references.
    In the "Elsevier (with titles)" the references are numbered as they appear in the text.


    Here an example from one article:
    [1] Akopian A.N., Souslova V., England S., Okuse K., Ogata N., Ure J., Smith A., Kerr B.J., McMahon S.B., Boyce S., Hill R., Stanfa L.C., Dickenson A.H., Wood J.N. The tetrodotoxin-resistant sodium channel SNS has a specialized function in pain pathways. Nat. Neurosci. 1999;2(6):541–548.
    [2] Babiychuk E.B., Draeger A. Annexins in cell membrane dynamics: Ca2+-regulated association of lipid microdomains. J. Cell Biol. 2000;150(5):1113–1123.
    [3] Baker M.D., Poon W.-Y.L., Wood J.N., Okuse K. Functional effects of co-transfecting β-subunits 1, 1A and 3 with NaV1. 8 α-subunit in a COS-7 heterologous system. J. Physiol. 2004;555P:PC20.
    [4] Bramham C.R., Messaoudi E. BDNF function in adult synaptic plasticity: the synaptic consolidation hypothesis. Prog. Neurobiol. 2005;76(2):99–125.

    Thanks for your help!
  • milorsmith
    edited February 28, 2011
    Is anyone working on this?

    The format of the bibliography is easy. The more difficult part is sorting the bibliography, assigning a citation number, and then inputting that citation number at the proper location in the paper.

    Here are the steps that must be accomplished:

    1) The bibliography must first be sorted alphabetically
    2) Citation numbers must be assigned with [1] being assigned to the alphabetically first bibliographic record and [2] being assigned to the second bibliographic record and so on
    3) The citation numbers must be inserted into the text in the correct location

    Does anyone know if this has been used in another style?
  • Joachim Blocher
    It seems, nobody is working on this. Unfortunately I have no idea how to change the style.

    Then I'll have to change the bibliography manually...
  • adamsmith
    download from here (right-click, save as...)
    https://gist.github.com/raw/853040/8f2f9e0311e9d537f6fdaa17017b7d696897cf03/neuroscience-letters.csl
    then drag the file neuroscience-letters.csl to any open FF window to install. Let me know how it goes.
  • milorsmith
    adamsmith: A great start!! Thanks for your help. The overall architecture is there and appears to work correctly. Here is what needs to be tweaked:

    1. Citations are not superscript, they are standard, e.g. [1]
    2. If only two authors, format is " and " between authors rather than ", "
    2. Journal is in italics
    3. No ". " after Journal (unless it is there for a journal abbreviation)
    4. Volume is in bold
    5. "pp. " before page numbers

    Thanks so much for your help!
  • adamsmith
    That'll take some time - as a general note (directed towards the OP, not you, milorsmith) - it's a good idea to post a fairly complete list of differences (along what I have now from milor) when you request a style.
  • zaurak
    The biggest issue with this style is that the bibliography eve though is sorted alphabetically is each entry is numbered in the order of appereance of the citation.

    So what we need here is a citation-number independent variable, that would increment from 1 with every new bibliographic entry.
  • adamsmith
    oh, ok - let me think about that. That might not be possible.
  • milorsmith
    @adamsmith: the current iteration of the csl (linked above) was correct in regard to the way the bibliography is sorted and the way the citation number is entered into the text.

    @zaurak: have you used adamsmith's csl posted above and compared it to Neuroscience Letters requirements? While format of the bibliography entry needs some tweaking, the sorting is correct.
  • milorsmith
    @zaurak This is from the author guideline page:

    "List: The list of references is arranged alphabetically and then numbered (numbers in square brackets)."

    This is how adamsmith's csl is currently set up.

    The examples Neuroscience Letters gives following the sentence I provided above are confusing because they are examples of individual citations, NOT an example of how they should be sorted.
  • zaurak
    @milorsmith The sorting works fine, i reffered the sorting in bibliography. The problem is that the if the first citation in text is from an Author named e.g. Wheeler and the second is Feynman then in the bibliography while sorted alphabetically the numbers will not be incremental, but in order of citation. Dont know if i was clear enough.

    I'm getting This

    [2] Feynman.....
    [1] Wheeler......

    Instead of

    [1] Feynman.....
    [2] Wheeler......

    Obviously with the correct intex citations.
  • adamsmith
    edited March 14, 2011
    My sense is that we're all on the same page on how this _should_ look, but we might be getting different results.

    I hadn't actually tested this before - I'm getting the bibliography sorting correctly, i.e.

    [1] Feynman.....
    [2] Wheeler......
    even when Wheeler is cited first. My guess would be that this might depend on the Zotero version. I've tested this on 2.0.9 - are you using the 2.1RC version zaurak?
  • milorsmith
    I'm also getting the correct sorting and am also using 2.0.9
  • zaurak
    I'm using an older one, i will update it, and check it, and will come back with results.
    Thanks
  • zaurak
    Yes indeed it works flawalessly. Thanks
  • slg220
    Hi! I am working with Zotero 2.1.5 and I can't get adamsmith's "neuroscience-letters.csl" to work properly (the alphabetical sorting goes haywire). Suggestions?
  • milorsmith
    Try upgrading to 2.1.6.

    @adamsmith: do you think you'll get a chance to work on the style issues I posted on March 9th? thanks!
  • slg220
    @milorsmith: thanks! unfortunately, this didn't help. :(
  • adamsmith
    soon - ish?
  • milorsmith
    cool, thanks a lot.
  • adamsmith
    milorsmith - sorry it took me a long time - I had a look but you seem to be talking about a different style altogether - I checked style guide and journal and none of the things you mention are in Neuroscience Letters.

    The style for Neuroscience Letters appears to be Elsevier (with titles), I'll add that asap.
  • milorsmith
    adamsmith - thanks for following up on this - I appreciate your help!

    You are correct - my notes from Mar 9 do not represent the Neuroscience Letters requirements. Since the Author's Guide is fairly vague, I tried to corroborate it with the online version of the references; however, the Author's Guide matches the print version -- which is what you had already setup in your last version of the CSL.

    The only (small) differences I'm seeing now between my your CSL (using Mac OS X 10.6.7, Word 2007, Zotero 2.1.7, Zotero MacWord Integration 3.1.2) and the Author Guide/print version is:

    -my in-text citation numbers are superscripted
    -the bibliography citation number-to-bibliography indentation seems off

    I don't know how important these differences are - but figured I'd let you know.
  • adamsmith
    Have a look at the style called Elsevier (with titles) - I believe that's actually the correct style (although you shouldn't be getting superscript - that might be a glitch in the formatting of your word document - the csl above doesn't have any superscript in it.)
  • milorsmith
    Elsevier (with titles) is similar, but not the same - the sorting is different. Your Neuroscience Letters CSL is correct: bibliography is sorted alphabetically by first author, assigned ascending citation numbers, and then in-text citation numbers are imbedded in the text. (Thus, in-text citations do not ascend numerically. Rather, the in-text citation numbers correspond to the placement of the first author's last name within the alphabetically sorted bibliography.)

    Yeah, I think the superscripting was a glitch unique to how my document was formatted. Thanks.
  • milorsmith
    In summary, your NL csl seems to be working very well and matches the NL Author Guide and the print version.

    If I have any problems in the future, I'll post here. Thanks again for your help!
  • adamsmith
    ok, on the repository now.
  • milorsmith
    Update: I submitted a manuscript to NSL and it turns out they do not accept "et al." Rather, they want all authors listed in the bibliography. Adamsmith, would have time to make this change? Thanks!
  • adamsmith
    It might a little before I get to this, but it's very easy to fix for you locally, just delete
    et-al-min="7" et-al-use-first="6"
    from the style
    http://www.zotero.org/support/dev/citation_styles/style_editing_step-by-step
    you can ignore everything about changing filename and ID, etc. - you could even just open the style directly from the style director in the Zotero date folder using a text editor.
    http://www.zotero.org/support/zotero_data
  • milorsmith
    Thanks
Sign In or Register to comment.