How to format your references using the Nature Cell Biology citation style

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

Nathan, R. Long-distance dispersal of plants. Science 313, 786–788 (2006).

A journal article with 2 authors

Lu, P. & Werb, Z. Patterning mechanisms of branched organs. Science 322, 1506–1509 (2008).

A journal article with 3 authors

Coussens, L. M., Fingleton, B. & Matrisian, L. M. Matrix metalloproteinase inhibitors and cancer: trials and tribulations. Science 295, 2387–2392 (2002).

A journal article with 6 or more authors

Tang, J. et al. Complete genome characterization of a novel enterovirus type EV-B106 isolated in China, 2012. Sci. Rep. 4, 4255 (2014).

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Ketring, K. L. & Glaze, M. B. Atlas of Feline Ophthalmology. (John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., 2012).

An edited book

Progress in Artificial Intelligence: 16th Portuguese Conference on Artificial Intelligence, EPIA 2013, Angra do Heroísmo, Azores, Portugal, September 9-12, 2013. Proceedings. vol. 8154 (Springer, 2013).

A chapter in an edited book

Strauser, E. et al. Semantic Map for Structural Bioinformatics: Enhanced Service Discovery Based on High Level Concept Ontology. in Resource Discovery: Third International Workshop, RED 2010, Paris, France, November 5, 2010, Revised Selected Papers (eds. Lacroix, Z. & Vidal, M. E.) 57–70 (Springer, 2012).

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 Cell Biology.

Blog post

Andrew, E. Newly-Released Maps of Saturn’s Moons Are The Clearest Ever Created. IFLScience https://www.iflscience.com/space/newly-released-maps-saturn-s-moons-are-clearest-ever-created/ (2014).

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. Inspectors General: Information on Resources and Selected Accomplishments of Five Inspectors Generals. (1999).

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Capelli, A. M. The (Un)Balanced Canon: Re-Visioning Feminist Conceptions of Madness and Transgression. (University of Louisiana, 2017).

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

George, N. A Soul Fable, Reimagined For a New Era. New York Times AR18 (2012).

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 Cell Biology
Abbreviation	Nat. Cell Biol.
ISSN (print)	1465-7392
ISSN (online)	1476-4679
Scope	Cell Biology