How to format your references using the Nature Geoscience citation style

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

Shepherd, T. G. Climate science: The dynamics of temperature extremes. Nature 522, 425–427 (2015).

A journal article with 2 authors

Ottino, J. M. & Lueptow, R. M. Materials science. On mixing and demixing. Science 319, 912–913 (2008).

A journal article with 3 authors

Sanderson, M. J., McMahon, M. M. & Steel, M. Terraces in phylogenetic tree space. Science 333, 448–450 (2011).

A journal article with 6 or more authors

Deng, X. et al. Edge contact dependent spin transport for n-type doping zigzag-graphene with asymmetric edge hydrogenation. Sci. Rep. 4, 4038 (2014).

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Bonneau, D., Fatu, A. & Souchet, D. Thermo-Hydrodynamic Lubrication in Hydrodynamic Bearings. (John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ, 2014).

An edited book

Growth, Differentiation and Sexuality. vol. 1 (Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, 2006).

A chapter in an edited book

Chue, K. L. Examining the Influence of the Big Five Personality Traits on the Relationship Between Autonomy, Motivation and Academic Achievement in the Twenty-First-Century Learner. in Motivation, Leadership and Curriculum design: Engaging the Net Generation and 21st Century Learners (ed. Koh, C.) 37–52 (Springer, Singapore, 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 Geoscience.

Blog post

Andrew, E. Polymer Blend Conducts Heat Ten Times More Efficiently Than Conventional Plastics. IFLScience (2014).

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. Fiscal Year 2012 Agreed-Upon Procedures: Excise Tax Distributions to the Airport and Airway Trust Fund and the Highway Trust Fund. (2012).

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Shah, N. High Performance Cryptography for Electronic Product Code for Internet of Things Applications. (University of Louisiana, Lafayette, LA, 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

Pilon, M. Dog’s Death After Westminster Has Handler Suspecting It Wasn’t an Accident. New York Times B12 (2013).

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 Geoscience
Abbreviation	Nat. Geosci.
ISSN (print)	1752-0894
ISSN (online)	1752-0908
Scope	General Earth and Planetary Sciences