How to format your references using the Nature Genetics citation style

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

Kazilek, C. SPORE series winner. Got a question? ‘Ask A Biologist’. Science 330, 1192–1193 (2010).

A journal article with 2 authors

Ronald, P. C. & Beutler, B. Plant and animal sensors of conserved microbial signatures. Science 330, 1061–1064 (2010).

A journal article with 3 authors

Ito, T., Woloszyn, M. & Mazloff, M. Anthropogenic carbon dioxide transport in the Southern Ocean driven by Ekman flow. Nature 463, 80–83 (2010).

A journal article with 6 or more authors

Dhanasekaran, S. M. et al. Delineation of prognostic biomarkers in prostate cancer. Nature 412, 822–826 (2001).

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Marteel-Parrish, A. E. & Abraham, M. A. Green Chemistry and Engineering. (John Wiley & Sons, Inc, 2013).

An edited book

Mansuy, R. Random Times and Enlargements of Filtrations in a Brownian Setting. vol. 1873 (Springer, 2006).

A chapter in an edited book

Messali, Z. & Soltani, F. Distributed Pre-Processed CA-CFAR Detection Structure For Non Gaussian Clutter Reduction. in Signal Processing for Image Enhancement and Multimedia Processing (eds. Damiani, E. et al.) 49–57 (Springer US, 2008).

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 Genetics.

Blog post

Taub, B. Stuttering May Be Caused By Reduced Blood Flow To A Key Region Of The Brain. 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. School Finance: Three States’ Experiences With Equity in School Funding. (1995).

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Gowetski, D. B. Manipulation of DNA topology using an artificial DNA-looping protein. (University of Maryland, College Park, 2012).

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

Hodara, S. Escaping the Past, or Embracing It Before It Fades. New York Times WE9 (2015).

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 Genetics
Abbreviation	Nat. Genet.
ISSN (print)	1061-4036
ISSN (online)	1546-1718
Scope	Genetics