How to format your references using the Nature Biotechnology citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Nature Biotechnology. 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

Dehaene, S. Neuroscience. Single-neuron arithmetic. Science 297, 1652–1653 (2002).

A journal article with 2 authors

Nandy, D. & Choudhuri, A. R. Explaining the latitudinal distribution of sunspots with deep meridional flow. Science 296, 1671–1673 (2002).

A journal article with 3 authors

Kortenkamp, S. J., Wetherill, G. W. & Inaba, S. Runaway growth of planetary embryos facilitated by massive bodies in a protoplanetary disk. Science 293, 1127–1129 (2001).

A journal article with 6 or more authors

Blackmer, T. et al. G protein betagamma subunit-mediated presynaptic inhibition: regulation of exocytotic fusion downstream of Ca2+ entry. Science 292, 293–297 (2001).

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Crane, L. Knowledge and Discourse Matters. (John Wiley & Sons, Inc, Hoboken, NJ, 2015).

An edited book

Regional Ecological Challenges for Peace in Africa, the Middle East, Latin America and Asia Pacific. vol. 5 (Springer International Publishing, Cham, 2016).

A chapter in an edited book

Mangao, D. D. & Thoe, N. K. Search for SEAMEO Young Scientists (SSYS) – RECSAM’s Initiative for Promoting Public Science Education: The Way Forward. in International Conference on Science Education 2012 Proceedings: Science Education: Policies and Social Responsibilities (eds. Zhang, B. et al.) 45–56 (Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, 2014).

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 Nature Biotechnology.

Blog post

Fang, J. What’s Happening To The Flowers At Fukushima? IFLScience (2015).

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. Intellectual Property: Federal Agency Efforts in Transferring and Reporting New Technology. (2002).

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Viruet, H. B. Effect of Forklift Operation on Lower Back Pain: An Evidence-Based Approach. (University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, OH, 2006).

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

Novick, S. M. A Summer Delight on a Split Bun. New York Times LI8 (2014).

In-text citations

References should be cited in the text by sequential numbers in superscript:

This sentence cites one reference ¹.
This sentence cites two references ^1,2.
This sentence cites four references ^1–4.

About the journal

Full journal title	Nature Biotechnology
Abbreviation	Nat. Biotechnol.
ISSN (print)	1087-0156
ISSN (online)	1546-1696
Scope	Biotechnology Molecular Medicine Bioengineering Biomedical Engineering Applied Microbiology and Biotechnology