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

Kato, T. Self-assembly of phase-segregated liquid crystal structures. Science 295, 2414–2418 (2002).

A journal article with 2 authors

Moffatt, H. K. & Shimomura, Y. Classical dynamics: spinning eggs--a paradox resolved. Nature 416, 385–386 (2002).

A journal article with 3 authors

Hopkins, M., Harrison, T. M. & Manning, C. E. Low heat flow inferred from >4 Gyr zircons suggests Hadean plate boundary interactions. Nature 456, 493–496 (2008).

A journal article with 6 or more authors

Park, H., Chang, S., Smith, M., Gradečak, S. & Kong, J. Interface engineering of graphene for universal applications as both anode and cathode in organic photovoltaics. Sci. Rep. 3, 1581 (2013).

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

ASAE. 7 Measures of Success. (ASAE: The Center for Association Leadership, Washington, DC, 2013).

An edited book

Databases Theory and Applications: 25th Australasian Database Conference, ADC 2014, Brisbane, QLD, Australia, July 14-16, 2014. Proceedings. vol. 8506 (Springer International Publishing, Cham, 2014).

A chapter in an edited book

Yu, H. & Wang, Y. Nonvolatile Memory Computing System. in Design Exploration of Emerging Nano-scale Non-volatile Memory (ed. Wang, Y.) 131–180 (Springer, New York, NY, 2014).

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

Evans, K. Whale That Had To Be Euthanized Found With 30 Plastic Bags In Its Stomach. IFLScience (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. Pipeline Safety: Preliminary Information on the Office of Pipeline Safety’s Actions to Strengthen Its Enforcement Program. (2004).

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Zellner, K. M. An examination of grade distribution patterns and grade inflation at a baccalaureate nursing program. (Capella University, Minneapolis, MN, 2008).

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

Creswell, J. & Walsh, M. W. When Your Life Insurance Gets Sick. New York Times BU1 (2016).

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)