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

Kalirai, J. S. (2012). The age of the Milky Way inner halo. Nature, 486(7401), 90–92.

A journal article with 2 authors

Brochard-Wyart, F., & de Gennes, P. G. (2003). Physics. How soft skin wrinkles. Science (New York, N.Y.), 300(5618), 441.

A journal article with 3 authors

Dian, B. C., Longarte, A., & Zwier, T. S. (2002). Conformational dynamics in a dipeptide after single-mode vibrational excitation. Science (New York, N.Y.), 296(5577), 2369–2373.

A journal article with 8 or more authors

LaHaye, M. D., Buu, O., Camarota, B., & Schwab, K. C. (2004). Approaching the quantum limit of a nanomechanical resonator. Science (New York, N.Y.), 304(5667), 74–77.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Johnson, M. D. (2016). Great Myths of Intimate Relationships. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

An edited book

Villadsen, J. (2011). Bioreaction Engineering Principles. (J. Nielsen & G. Lidén, Eds.) (3rd ed.). Boston, MA: Springer US.

A chapter in an edited book

Horvath, J., & Cameron, R. (2015). Robots, Drones, and Other Things That Move. In R. Cameron (Ed.), The New Shop Class: Getting Started with 3D Printing, Arduino, and Wearable Tech (pp. 47–55). Berkeley, CA: Apress.

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

Andrew, D. (2017, January 4). Why Girls Are Put Off Studying Computer Science. 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. (1984). U.S. and Soviet Bloc Training of Latin American and Caribbean Students: Considerations in Developing Future U.S. Programs (No. NSIAD-84-109). 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

Delcambre, M. L. (2014). Finite Difference Schemes for a Structured Model of Mycobacterium marinum (Doctoral dissertation). University of Louisiana, Lafayette, LA.

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

Billard, M. (2010, September 16). Jewelry Born Of Child’s Play. New York Times, p. E7.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Kalirai 2012).
This sentence cites two references (Brochard-Wyart and de Gennes 2003; Kalirai 2012).

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

Two authors: (Brochard-Wyart and de Gennes 2003)
Three or more authors: (LaHaye et al. 2004)

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