How to format your references using the Naturwissenschaften citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Naturwissenschaften. 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	Find the style here: output styles overview
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

Check E (2006) Biomedical funding remains flat. Nature 439:644

A journal article with 2 authors

Peebles PJE, Nusser A (2010) Nearby galaxies as pointers to a better theory of cosmic evolution. Nature 465:565–569

A journal article with 3 authors

Koh K, Zheng X, Sehgal A (2006) JETLAG resets the Drosophila circadian clock by promoting light-induced degradation of TIMELESS. Science 312:1809–1812

A journal article with 5 or more authors

Krol KM, Kamboj SK, Curran HV, Grossmann T (2014) Breastfeeding experience differentially impacts recognition of happiness and anger in mothers. Sci Rep 4:7006

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Drake PP, Fabozzi FJ (2009) Foundations and Applications of the Time Value of Money. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ

An edited book

Barbosa D, Anton S, Gurvits L, Maia D (eds) (2012) The Square Kilometre Array: Paving the way for the new 21st century radio astronomy paradigm: Proceedings of Symposium 7 of JENAM 2010. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

A chapter in an edited book

Broersen J (2009) A Complete STIT Logic for Knowledge and Action, and Some of Its Applications. In: Baldoni M, Son TC, Riemsdijk MB van, Winikoff M (eds) Declarative Agent Languages and Technologies VI: 6th International Workshop, DALT 2008, Estoril, Portugal, May 12, 2008, Revised Selected and Invited Papers. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, pp 47–59

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 Naturwissenschaften.

Blog post

Andrew E (2014) Half Of All Stars Could Exist Outside of Galaxies. In: IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/space/half-all-stars-could-exist-outside-galaxies/. Accessed 30 Oct 2018

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 (1995) Amtrak: Early Progress Made in Implementing Strategic and Business Plan, but Obstacles Remain. U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

McCafferty B (2009) Chalk Talk. Doctoral dissertation, University of Maryland, College Park

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

Corkery M, Protess B (2016) How the Twinkie Made the Superrich Even Richer. New York Times A1

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Check 2006).
This sentence cites two references (Check 2006; Peebles and Nusser 2010).

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

Two authors: (Peebles and Nusser 2010)
Three or more authors: (Krol et al. 2014)

About the journal

Full journal title	Naturwissenschaften
Abbreviation	Sci. Nat.
ISSN (print)	0028-1042
ISSN (online)	1432-1904
Scope	Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics General Medicine