How to format your references using the Journal of Natural History citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Journal of Natural History. 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

Lander GH. 2003. Physics. Sensing electrons on the edge. Science. 301:1057–1059.

A journal article with 2 authors

Hadders MA, Lens SMA. 2014. Cell biology. Mind the midzone. Science. 345:265–266.

A journal article with 3 authors

James A, Pitchford JW, Plank MJ. 2013. James et al. reply. Nature. 500:E2-3.

A journal article with 12 or more authors

Wolf SA, Awschalom DD, Buhrman RA, Daughton JM, von Molnár S, Roukes ML, Chtchelkanova AY, Treger DM. 2001. Spintronics: a spin-based electronics vision for the future. Science. 294:1488–1495.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Cox DA. 2004. Galois Theory. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

An edited book

Manfrè L, editor. 2016. Spinal Canal Stenosis. Cham: Springer International Publishing.

A chapter in an edited book

Oxman R. 2011. Design Paradigms for the Enhancement of Presence in Virtual Environments. In: Wang X, Tsai JJ-H, editors. Collaborative Design in Virtual Environments. Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands; p. 41–49.

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 Journal of Natural History.

Blog post

Andrew E. 2014. 3D Printed Hermit Crab Shells Depict Famous Landmarks. IFLScience [Internet]. [cited 2018 Oct 30]. Available from: https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/3d-printed-hermit-crab-shells-depict-famous-landmarks/

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. Award of Indian Health Professions Scholarships. 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

Jernigan MB. 2013. Use of uprooted invasive buffelgrass (Pennisetum ciliare ) parent plants as thatch to reduce progeny seedling emergence [Doctoral dissertation]. Tucson, AZ: University of Arizona.

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

Burghardt LF. 2006. Cupid With a Dark Side. New York Times.:14LI7.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Lander 2003).
This sentence cites two references (Lander 2003; Hadders and Lens 2014).

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

Two authors: (Hadders and Lens 2014)
Three or more authors: (Wolf et al. 2001)

About the journal

Full journal title	Journal of Natural History
Abbreviation	J. Nat. Hist.
ISSN (print)	0022-2933
ISSN (online)	1464-5262
Scope	Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics