How to format your references using the Nature Climate Change citation style

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

Shanklin, J. Reflections on the ozone hole. Nature 465, 34–35 (2010).

A journal article with 2 authors

Maselli, V. & Trincardi, F. Man made deltas. Sci. Rep. 3, 1926 (2013).

A journal article with 3 authors

Häkkinen, S., Rhines, P. B. & Worthen, D. L. Atmospheric blocking and Atlantic multidecadal ocean variability. Science 334, 655–659 (2011).

A journal article with 6 or more authors

Joye, S. B. et al. Comment on ‘A persistent oxygen anomaly reveals the fate of spilled methane in the deep Gulf of Mexico’. Science 332, 1033; author reply 1033 (2011).

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Hossler, F. E. Ultrastructure Atlas of Human Tissues. (John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2014).

An edited book

Reforesting Landscapes: Linking Pattern and Process. vol. 10 (Springer Netherlands, 2010).

A chapter in an edited book

Ceccherini Nelli, L. Photovoltaic-Integrated Buildings in Florence and Lucca, Italy: Case Studies. in Renewable Energy in the Service of Mankind Vol II: Selected Topics from the World Renewable Energy Congress WREC 2014 (ed. Sayigh, A.) 43–56 (Springer International Publishing, 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 Climate Change.

Blog post

Hale, T. There’s Toxic Pollutants In The World’s Deepest Ocean Trenches. IFLScience https://www.iflscience.com/environment/theres-toxic-pollutants-in-the-worlds-deepest-ocean-trenches/ (2016).

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. Federal Communications Commission: Non-U.S.-Licensed Satellites Providing Domestic and International Service in the United States. (1997).

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Richardson, V. M. In vitro thyroid hormone metabolism: Effects of nuclear receptor activation on the metabolic profiles of thyroxine in rat and human hepatocytes. (University of North Carolina, 2013).

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 Climate Change
Abbreviation	Nat. Clim. Chang.
ISSN (print)	1758-678X
ISSN (online)	1758-6798
Scope	Environmental Science (miscellaneous) Social Sciences (miscellaneous)