How to format your references using the Journal of Natural History citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Journal of Natural History. 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 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

Crutzen PJ. 2004. A late change to the programme. Nature. 429:349.

A journal article with 2 authors

Kawatani Y, Hamilton K. 2013. Weakened stratospheric quasibiennial oscillation driven by increased tropical mean upwelling. Nature. 497:478–481.

A journal article with 3 authors

Wiedenheft B, Sternberg SH, Doudna JA. 2012. RNA-guided genetic silencing systems in bacteria and archaea. Nature. 482:331–338.

A journal article with 12 or more authors

Zhong J, Liu W, Kong L, Morais PC. 2014. A new approach for highly accurate, remote temperature probing using magnetic nanoparticles. Sci Rep. 4:6338.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Grimble MJ. 2006. Robust Industrial Control Systems. Chichester, England: John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

An edited book

Hoe LV. 2006. MR Cholangiopancreatography: Atlas with Cross-Sectional Imaging Correlation. Vanbeckevoort D, Mermuys K, Steenbergen WV, editors. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer.

A chapter in an edited book

Bartelmann M, Bennett CL, Bucher M, Burigana C, Capaccioli M, D’Onofrio M, Durrer R, Gioia I, Hasinger G, Lawrence C, et al. 2009. Next Challenges. In: D’Onofrio M, Burigana C, editors. Questions of Modern Cosmology: Galileo’s Legacy. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer; p. 429–501.

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 Journal of Natural History.

Blog post

Fang J. 2015. Teenager Develops Test That Can Diagnose Alzheimer’s Before Symptoms. IFLScience [Internet]. [cited 2018 Oct 30]. Available from: https://www.iflscience.com/brain/teenager-designs-early-test-alzheimers/

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. 2005. DOD Business Systems Modernization: Long-Standing Weaknesses in Enterprise Architecture Development Need to Be Addressed. 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

Tablason JM. 2014. Recollecting [Doctoral dissertation]. Long Beach, CA: California State University, Long Beach.

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

Harris G. 2012. India’s Olympic Committee Is Suspended by the I.O.C. New York Times.:B16.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Crutzen 2004).
This sentence cites two references (Crutzen 2004; Kawatani and Hamilton 2013).

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

Two authors: (Kawatani and Hamilton 2013)
Three or more authors: (Zhong et al. 2014)

About the journal

Full journal title	Journal of Natural History
Abbreviation	J. Nat. Hist.
ISSN (print)	0022-2933
ISSN (online)	1464-5262
Scope	Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics