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

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

Roberts, L. HIV/AIDS in America. Introduction. Science 337, 167 (2012).

A journal article with 2 authors

Karp, X. & Ambros, V. Developmental biology. Encountering microRNAs in cell fate signaling. Science 310, 1288–1289 (2005).

A journal article with 3 authors

Javaux, E. J., Knoll, A. H. & Walter, M. R. Morphological and ecological complexity in early eukaryotic ecosystems. Nature 412, 66–69 (2001).

A journal article with 6 or more authors

Månsson, M. et al. Lp(a) is not associated with diabetes but affects fibrinolysis and clot structure ex vivo. Sci. Rep. 4, 5318 (2014).

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Reed, S. M. & Hrci. The HRCI Official Body of Knowledge. (John Wiley & Sons, Inc, Hoboken, NJ, 2017).

An edited book

Lipton, A. M. The Common Sense Guide to Dementia For Clinicians and Caregivers. (Springer, New York, NY, 2013).

A chapter in an edited book

Ostwald, M. J. & Vaughan, J. Refining the Method. in The Fractal Dimension of Architecture (ed. Vaughan, J.) 87–131 (Springer International Publishing, Cham, 2016).

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 Chemical Biology.

Blog post

Andrew, E. Even The Pope Gets It – Carbon Markets Won’t Fix The Climate. IFLScience https://www.iflscience.com/environment/even-pope-gets-it-carbon-markets-won-t-fix-climate/ (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. Polar Weather Satellites: NOAA Is Working to Ensure Continuity but Needs to Quickly Address Information Security Weaknesses and Future Program Uncertainties. (2016).

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Marchek, S. P. A quantitative investigation of the Technology Obsolescence Model (TOM) factors that influence the decision to replace obsolete systems. (Capella University, Minneapolis, MN, 2015).

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

Kishkovsky, S. Honor a Literary Giant, But Be Careful Where. New York Times A10 (2008).

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 Chemical Biology
Abbreviation	Nat. Chem. Biol.
ISSN (print)	1552-4450
ISSN (online)	1552-4469
Scope	Cell Biology Molecular Biology