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

Heeney, J. L. Ebola: Hidden reservoirs. Nature 527, 453–455 (2015).

A journal article with 2 authors

Meibom, A. & Frei, R. Evidence for an ancient osmium isotopic reservoir in Earth. Science 296, 516–518 (2002).

A journal article with 3 authors

Roscioli, J. R., McCunn, L. R. & Johnson, M. A. Quantum structure of the intermolecular proton bond. Science 316, 249–254 (2007).

A journal article with 6 or more authors

Schlittler, R. R. et al. Single crystals of single-walled carbon nanotubes formed by self-assembly. Science 292, 1136–1139 (2001).

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Groves, E. The Constant Contact Guide to Email Marketing. (John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2009).

An edited book

Cerebral Blood Flow, Metabolism, and Head Trauma: The Pathotrajectory of Traumatic Brain Injury. (Springer, 2013).

A chapter in an edited book

Worbs, T. & Förster, R. T Cell Migration Dynamics Within Lymph Nodes During Steady State: An Overview of Extracellular and Intracellular Factors Influencing the Basal Intranodal T Cell Motility. in Visualizing Immunity (eds. Dustin, M. & McGavern, D.) 71–105 (Springer, 2009).

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

Andrew, E. Activists Will Use Drones to Fly Abortion Pills into Poland. IFLScience https://www.iflscience.com/technology/activists-will-use-drones-fly-abortion-pills-poland/ (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. FCC: Ka-Band Satellite Application and Licensing Procedure. (1997).

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Neilson, D. H. Structured interactions and collective outcomes essays on production and finance. (Columbia University, 2009).

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

Grynbaum, M. M. & Koblin, J. Fox Settles Sex Harassment Suit as Another Host Abruptly Exits. New York Times A1 (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 Digest
ISSN (print)	1880-0556
Scope

Research and Writing Guides