How to format your references using the Human Nature citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Human 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	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 references management programs.
BibTeX	BibTeX syles 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

Hambley, T. W. (2007). Chemistry. Metal-based therapeutics. Science (New York, N.Y.), 318(5855), 1392–1393.

A journal article with 2 authors

Singleton, A. B., & Traynor, B. J. (2015). Genetics. For complex disease genetics, collaboration drives progress. Science (New York, N.Y.), 347(6229), 1422–1423.

A journal article with 3 authors

Xue, P., Qin, H., & Tang, B. (2014). Trapping photons on the line: controllable dynamics of a quantum walk. Scientific reports, 4, 4825.

A journal article with 8 or more authors

Kharchenko, P. V., Alekseyenko, A. A., Schwartz, Y. B., Minoda, A., Riddle, N. C., Ernst, J., et al. (2011). Comprehensive analysis of the chromatin landscape in Drosophila melanogaster. Nature, 471(7339), 480–485.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Rossetti, N. (2005). Managing Power Electronics. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

An edited book

Lichtfouse, E. (Ed.). (2012). Farming for Food and Water Security (Vol. 10). Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands.

A chapter in an edited book

Savo, V., & Arndt, U. M. (2014). From Learning to Teaching: Bridging Students’ Experience and Teachers’ Expectations. In C. L. Quave (Ed.), Innovative Strategies for Teaching in the Plant Sciences (pp. 47–58). New York, NY: Springer.

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 Human Nature.

Blog post

Fang, J. (2016, June 1). New Family Of Extinct Marsupials Discovered In Australia. IFLScience. IFLScience. Accessed 30 October 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). School Finance: Three States’ Experiences With Equity in School Funding (No. HEHS-96-39). Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Sorensen, T. R. (2010). The Use of Classroom Walk-Through Observations as a Strategy to Improve Teaching and Learning: A Student Centered Perspective (Doctoral dissertation). Lindenwood University, St. Charles, MO.

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

Koblin, J. (2016, November 29). Wilmore Signs Deal With ABC Studios. New York Times, p. C3.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Hambley 2007).
This sentence cites two references (Hambley 2007; Singleton and Traynor 2015).

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

Two authors: (Singleton and Traynor 2015)
Three or more authors: (Kharchenko et al. 2011)

About the journal

Full journal title	Human Nature
Abbreviation	Hum. Nat.
ISSN (print)	1045-6767
ISSN (online)	1936-4776
Scope	Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics Arts and Humanities (miscellaneous) Social Sciences (miscellaneous) Sociology and Political Science Anthropology