How to format your references using the Natural Product Research citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Natural Product Research. 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:

PaperpileThe citation style is built in and you can choose it in Settings > Citation Style or Paperpile > Citation Style in Google Docs.
EndNoteDownload the output style file
Mendeley, Zotero, Papers, and othersThe style is either built in or you can download a CSL file that is supported by most references management programs.
BibTeXBibTeX 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
Zurek WH. 2001. Sub-Planck structure in phase space and its relevance for quantum decoherence. Nature. 412(6848):712–717.
A journal article with 2 authors
Bogdanove AJ, Voytas DF. 2011. TAL effectors: customizable proteins for DNA targeting. Science. 333(6051):1843–1846.
A journal article with 3 authors
Vecchi GA, Swanson KL, Soden BJ. 2008. Climate change. Whither hurricane activity? Science. 322(5902):687–689.
A journal article with 12 or more authors
Christner BC, Morris CE, Foreman CM, Cai R, Sands DC. 2008. Ubiquity of biological ice nucleators in snowfall. Science. 319(5867):1214.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book
Siddiqi N. 2017. Intelligent Credit Scoring. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
An edited book
Bonomo L, Carriero A, Centonze M, Scarabino T, editors. 2010. Management in radiologia. Milano: Springer.
A chapter in an edited book
S.Harmon R. 2005. Geological Development of Panama. In: Harmon RS, editor. The Río Chagres, Panama: A Multidisciplinary Profile of a Tropical Watershed. Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands; p. 45–62.

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 Natural Product Research.

Blog post
Andrew E. 2015. Scientists Trace The Origins Of The Last Two HIV-1 Groups. IFLScience [Internet]. [accessed 2018 Oct 30]. https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/scientists-trace-origins-last-two-hiv-1-groups/

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. 2007. USCIS Transformation: Improvements to Performance, Human Capital, and Information Technology Management Needed as Modernization Proceeds. 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
Rodriguez RM. 2017. Experimental Evaluation of Cooling Effectiveness and Water Conservation in a Poultry House Using Flow Blurring Atomizers [Doctoral dissertation]. Tampa, FL: University of South Florida.

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
Rothenberg B. 2016. Remodeling the U.S. Fed Cup Team. New York Times.:B10.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Zurek 2001).
This sentence cites two references (Zurek 2001; Bogdanove and Voytas 2011).

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

  • Two authors: (Bogdanove and Voytas 2011)
  • Three or more authors: (Christner et al. 2008)

About the journal

Full journal titleNatural Product Research
ISSN (print)1478-6419
ISSN (online)1478-6427
ScopePlant Science
Biochemistry
Analytical Chemistry
Organic Chemistry

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