How to format your references using the Nature Chemical Biology citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Nature Chemical Biology. 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. The skills hunt. Nature 431, 109 (2004).

A journal article with 2 authors

Miller, T. M. & Cleveland, D. W. Medicine. Treating neurodegenerative diseases with antibiotics. Science 307, 361–362 (2005).

A journal article with 3 authors

Kiesecker, J. M., Blaustein, A. R. & Belden, L. K. Complex causes of amphibian population declines. Nature 410, 681–684 (2001).

A journal article with 6 or more authors

Wang, F. et al. Mechanically modulated dewetting by atomic force microscope for micro- and nano- droplet array fabrication. Sci. Rep. 4, 6524 (2014).

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Gardner, S. & Birley, S. Blogging for Dummies®. (Wiley Publishing, Inc., Hoboken, NJ, 2010).

An edited book

MDCT: From Protocols to Practice. (Springer, Milano, 2008).

A chapter in an edited book

Arienzo, A. Introduction. in The Concept of Time in Early Twentieth-Century Philosophy: A Philosophical Thematic Atlas (ed. Santoianni, F.) 29–33 (Springer International Publishing, Cham, 2016).

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 Nature Chemical Biology.

Blog post

Andrew, E. How Yersinia Pestis Evolved its Ability to Kill Millions via Pneumonic Plague. IFLScience (2015).

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. National Airspace System: Transformation Will Require Cultural Change, Balanced Funding Priorities, and Use of All Available Management Tools. (2005).

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Peters, A. The mark of gender: Depicting power and the female body in colonial Peru. (California State University, Long Beach, Long Beach, CA, 2009).

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

Saslow, L. Study to Help Coordinate Transportation Solutions. New York Times 14LI2 (2006).

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	Nature Chemical Biology
Abbreviation	Nat. Chem. Biol.
ISSN (print)	1552-4450
ISSN (online)	1552-4469
Scope	Cell Biology Molecular Biology