How to format your references using the Nature Methods citation style

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

Mavilio, F. Gene therapies need new development models. Nature 490, 7 (2012).

A journal article with 2 authors

Li, A. & Yong, X. Entanglement guarantees emergence of cooperation in quantum prisoner’s dilemma games on networks. Sci. Rep. 4, 6286 (2014).

A journal article with 3 authors

Devincre, B., Hoc, T. & Kubin, L. Dislocation mean free paths and strain hardening of crystals. Science 320, 1745–1748 (2008).

A journal article with 6 or more authors

Boetius, A. et al. A marine microbial consortium apparently mediating anaerobic oxidation of methane. Nature 407, 623–626 (2000).

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Lev, B. & Gu, F. The End of Accounting and the Path Forward for Investors and Managers. (John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ, 2016).

An edited book

Elucidation of Abiotic Stress Signaling in Plants: Functional Genomics Perspectives, Volume 2. (Springer, New York, NY, 2015).

A chapter in an edited book

Blackwell, J. & Martin, J. Linguistic Points. in A Scientific Approach to Scientific Writing (ed. Martin, J.) 63–76 (Springer, New York, NY, 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 Methods.

Blog post

Andrew, E. Is This Really What A Big Mac Does To Your Body In An Hour? 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. Space Shuttle: NASA’s Major Changes to Flight Hardware. (1988).

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Brightbill, R. G. Bradenton, FL: A Patchwork City. (University of South Florida, Tampa, FL, 2012).

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

Powell, M. From the Cavaliers, A Nifty Glimpse Of ‘What If?’ New York Times SP3 (2017).

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 Methods
Abbreviation	Nat. Methods
ISSN (print)	1548-7091
ISSN (online)	1548-7105
Scope	Biochemistry Biotechnology Cell Biology Molecular Biology