How to format your references using the Nature citation style

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

Eggleston, C. M. Geochemistry. Toward new uses for hematite. Science 320, 184–185 (2008).

A journal article with 2 authors

Stark, L. A. & Pompei, K. Winner of Science Prize for Online Resources in Education. Making genetics easy to understand. Science 327, 538–539 (2010).

A journal article with 3 authors

Javaux, E. J., Marshall, C. P. & Bekker, A. Organic-walled microfossils in 3.2-billion-year-old shallow-marine siliciclastic deposits. Nature 463, 934–938 (2010).

A journal article with 6 or more authors

Hung, C. P., Kreiman, G., Poggio, T. & DiCarlo, J. J. Fast readout of object identity from macaque inferior temporal cortex. Science 310, 863–866 (2005).

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Ananthakrishnan, A. N., Xavier, R. J. & Podolsky, D. K. Inflammatory Bowel Diseases. (John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, Chichester, UK, 2017).

An edited book

Scheffers, A. M. The Coastlines of the World with Google Earth: Understanding Our Environment. vol. 2 (Springer Netherlands, Dordrecht, 2012).

A chapter in an edited book

Hirvensalo, M. Quantum Information – A Tutorial. in Unconventional Computation: 10th International Conference, UC 2011, Turku, Finland, June 6-10, 2011. Proceedings (eds. Calude, C. S., Kari, J., Petre, I. & Rozenberg, G.) 11–13 (Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, 2011).

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.

Blog post

O`Callaghan, J. Warning Of ‘1 in 100’ San Andreas Fault Earthquake Prompts Concerns. IFLScience https://www.iflscience.com/environment/warning-of-1-in-100-san-andreas-fault-earthquake-prompts-concerns/ (2016).

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. Quality Management: Scoping Study. (1990).

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Simon-Owens, N. L. Southern Virginia Higher Education Center: An exploration of factors affecting organizational leadership. (University of Phoenix, Phoenix, AZ, 2010).

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

Hollander, S. From Nothing, A Great Team Rises; Duluth Women’s Hockey Program Surges to Prominence in Its First Year. New York Times D1 (2000).

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
Abbreviation	Nature
ISSN (print)	0028-0836
ISSN (online)	1476-4687
Scope	Multidisciplinary