How to format your references using the Human Nature citation style

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

Spitzer, N. C. (2015). DEVELOPMENTAL NEUROSCIENCE. Neurotransmitter-tailored dendritic trees. Science (New York, N.Y.), 350(6260), 510–511.

A journal article with 2 authors

Rohde, R. A., & Muller, R. A. (2005). Cycles in fossil diversity. Nature, 434(7030), 208–210.

A journal article with 3 authors

Xu, Y., Ramu, Y., & Lu, Z. (2008). Removal of phospho-head groups of membrane lipids immobilizes voltage sensors of K+ channels. Nature, 451(7180), 826–829.

A journal article with 8 or more authors

Joh, H. M., Choi, J. Y., Kim, S. J., Chung, T. H., & Kang, T.-H. (2014). Effect of additive oxygen gas on cellular response of lung cancer cells induced by atmospheric pressure helium plasma jet. Scientific reports, 4, 6638.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Godula-Jopek, A., Jehle, W., & Wellnitz, J. (2012). Hydrogen Storage Technologies. Weinheim, Germany: Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA.

An edited book

Bonča, J., & Kruchinin, S. (Eds.). (2008). Electron Transport in Nanosystems. Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands.

A chapter in an edited book

Skjerdal, T. (2016). Why the Arab Spring Never Came to Ethiopia. In B. Mutsvairo (Ed.), Participatory Politics and Citizen Journalism in a Networked Africa: A Connected Continent (pp. 77–89). London: Palgrave Macmillan UK.

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 Human Nature.

Blog post

Andrew, D. (2016, August 30). How A Nasty, Brain-Eating Parasite Could Help Us Fight Cancer. IFLScience. IFLScience. Accessed 30 October 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. (1987). DOD’s Acquisition of the Composite Health Care System (No. T-IMTEC-87-3). Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Washington, S. (2010). Counseling students ability to diagnose Asperger’s Syndrome (Doctoral dissertation). California State University, Long Beach, Long Beach, CA.

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

Kenigsberg, B. (2017, August 10). In Pursuit of a Social Media Mirage. New York Times, p. C10.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Spitzer 2015).
This sentence cites two references (Rohde and Muller 2005; Spitzer 2015).

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

Two authors: (Rohde and Muller 2005)
Three or more authors: (Joh et al. 2014)

About the journal

Full journal title	Human Nature
Abbreviation	Hum. Nat.
ISSN (print)	1045-6767
ISSN (online)	1936-4776
Scope	Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics Arts and Humanities (miscellaneous) Social Sciences (miscellaneous) Sociology and Political Science Anthropology