How to format your references using the Nature citation style

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

Dickey, B. F. Biochemistry. Walking on solid ground. Science 337, 924–925 (2012).

A journal article with 2 authors

Payne, J. L. & Wagner, A. The robustness and evolvability of transcription factor binding sites. Science 343, 875–877 (2014).

A journal article with 3 authors

Shi, Y., Evans, J. E. & Rock, K. L. Molecular identification of a danger signal that alerts the immune system to dying cells. Nature 425, 516–521 (2003).

A journal article with 6 or more authors

Dong, D. et al. Analyzing strawberry spoilage via its volatile compounds using longpath Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy. Sci. Rep. 3, 2585 (2013).

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Wahbi, M. Algorithms and Ordering Heuristics for Distributed Constraint Satisfaction Problems. (John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ USA, 2013).

An edited book

Immigration Regulation in Federal States: Challenges and Responses in Comparative Perspective. vol. 9 (Springer Netherlands, Dordrecht, 2014).

A chapter in an edited book

Izu, T., Shimoyama, T. & Takenaka, M. How to Forge a Time-Stamp Which Adobe’s Acrobat Accepts. in Cryptography and Coding: 11th IMA International Conference, Cirencester, UK, December 18-20, 2007. Proceedings (ed. Galbraith, S. D.) 54–72 (Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, 2007).

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.

Blog post

O`Callaghan, J. SpaceX’s Next Rocket Will Liftoff From A Historic Former Space Shuttle Launch Pad. IFLScience https://www.iflscience.com/space/spacex-next-rocket-will-launch-from-a-historic-former-space-shuttle-pad/ (2017).

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. Information on the Energy Information Administration’s Financial Reporting System. (1985).

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Bockler, T. Legal advocacy program for low-income children with disabilities: A grant proposal. (California State University, Long Beach, Long Beach, CA, 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. This Affordable Housing Would Stay Affordable. New York Times WE9 (2007).

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
Abbreviation	Nature
ISSN (print)	0028-0836
ISSN (online)	1476-4687
Scope	Multidisciplinary