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

Diamond, J. Anthropology. The astonishing micropygmies. Science 306, 2047–2048 (2004).

A journal article with 2 authors

Brookmeyer, R. & Blades, N. Prevention of inhalational anthrax in the U.S. outbreak. Science 295, 1861 (2002).

A journal article with 3 authors

Sachs, J. P., Anderson, R. F. & Lehman, S. J. Glacial surface temperatures of the southeast Atlantic Ocean. Science 293, 2077–2079 (2001).

A journal article with 6 or more authors

Luchtmann, M. et al. Gadolinium-enhanced magnetic resonance angiography in brain death. Sci. Rep. 4, 3659 (2014).

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Tebbani, S., Lopes, F., Filali, R., Dumur, D. & Pareau, D. CO 2 Biofixation by Microalgae. (John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ, 2014).

An edited book

Geometric Methods in Algebra and Number Theory. vol. 235 (Birkhäuser, Boston, MA, 2005).

A chapter in an edited book

Henning, M. A. & Yeo, A. Total Domination in Trees. in Total Domination in Graphs (ed. Yeo, A.) 31–38 (Springer, New York, NY, 2013).

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

Andrew, E. Sex Offending May Be In The Genes But Knowing That Won’t Prevent It. IFLScience https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/sex-offending-may-be-genes-knowing-won-t-prevent-it/ (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. Transportation Infrastructure: Oversight of Rental Rates for Highway Construction Equipment Is Inadequate. (1993).

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Shakya, R. M. Watershed-Scale Evaluation of Flood Reduction Effect of Low Impact Development Designs. (Southern Illinois University, Edwardsville, IL, 2014).

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

Kelly, C. An Unorthodox Life Yields a Novelist of Promise. New York Times A27B (2011).

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