How to format your references using the Nature Immunology citation style

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

Pearson, H. Breast-cancer survey sets screening age for women. Nature 416, 251 (2002).

A journal article with 2 authors

Verheyden, J. M. & Sun, X. An Fgf/Gremlin inhibitory feedback loop triggers termination of limb bud outgrowth. Nature 454, 638–641 (2008).

A journal article with 3 authors

He, C., Jiang, S. P. & Shen, P. K. Large-scale and rapid synthesis of disk-shaped and nano-sized graphene. Sci. Rep. 3, 2144 (2013).

A journal article with 6 or more authors

Wei, D. S. et al. Compartmentalized and binary behavior of terminal dendrites in hippocampal pyramidal neurons. Science 293, 2272–2275 (2001).

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Chen, N. Aerothermodynamics of Turbomachinery. (John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, Chichester, UK, 2010).

An edited book

Heat Shock Proteins and the Brain: Implications for Neurodegenerative Diseases and Neuroprotection. vol. 3 (Springer Netherlands, Dordrecht, 2008).

A chapter in an edited book

Immorlica, N. Technology Diffusion in Social Networks. in SOFSEM 2009: Theory and Practice of Computer Science: 35th Conference on Current Trends in Theory and Practice of Computer Science, Špindlerův Mlýn, Czech Republic, January 24-30, 2009. Proceedings (eds. Nielsen, M. et al.) 35–36 (Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, 2009).

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 Immunology.

Blog post

Andrew, E. Astronaut Captures Spectacular Image Of Planetary Alignment From Space. 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. Motor Carrier Safety: Preliminary Information on the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration’s Efforts to Identify and Follow Up with High-Risk Carriers. (2007).

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Fearrington, N. D. The relationship between fathers’ pre -natal involvement with the mother and post -natal involvement with the child(ren). (Capella University, Minneapolis, MN, 2008).

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

Cooper, H. Bush Is Likely to End Term With Iran Issue Unsettled. New York Times A10 (2008).

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 Immunology
Abbreviation	Nat. Immunol.
ISSN (print)	1529-2908
ISSN (online)	1529-2916
Scope	Immunology