How to format your references using the Nature Digest citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Nature Digest. 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	Find the style here: output styles overview
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

Grayson, M. Introduction: Curiosity aroused. Nature 467, S2-3 (2010).

A journal article with 2 authors

Doudna, J. A. & Cech, T. R. The chemical repertoire of natural ribozymes. Nature 418, 222–228 (2002).

A journal article with 3 authors

Legramandi, M. A., Schepens, B. & Cavagna, G. A. Running humans attain optimal elastic bounce in their teens. Sci. Rep. 3, 1310 (2013).

A journal article with 6 or more authors

Gloeckler, G. et al. Interception of comet Hyakutake’s ion tail at a distance of 500 million kilometres. Nature 404, 576–578 (2000).

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Chu, L.-Y. & Wang, W. Microfluidics for Advanced Functional Polymeric Materials. (Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, 2017).

An edited book

Software Engineering Education Going Agile: 11th China–Europe International Symposium on Software Engineering Education (CEISEE 2015). (Springer International Publishing, 2016).

A chapter in an edited book

Sharma, A., Srivastava, J. & Kumar, A. A Comprehensive Overview of Renewable Energy Status in India. in Environmental Sustainability: Role of Green Technologies (eds. Thangavel, P. & Sridevi, G.) 91–105 (Springer India, 2015).

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 Digest.

Blog post

O`Callaghan, J. Hibernating Aliens May Explain Why We Haven’t Found Any Other Life Yet. IFLScience https://www.iflscience.com/space/hibernating-aliens-may-explain-why-we-havent-found-any-other-life-yet/ (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. Year 2000 Computing Challenge: Estimated Costs, Planned Uses of Emergency Funding, and Future Implications. (1999).

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Nespoli, G. Impact of Supervisor Support on Employee Job Satisfaction Among Fundraising Staff Within Higher Education. (Pepperdine University, 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

Eligon, J. Trauma, and Red Tape, in Las Vegas. New York Times A2 (2017).

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 Digest
ISSN (print)	1880-0556
Scope