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

Randolph, G. J. Immunology. No need to coax monocytes. Science 332, 1268–1269 (2011).

A journal article with 2 authors

Goldenfeld, N. & Woese, C. Biology’s next revolution. Nature 445, 369 (2007).

A journal article with 3 authors

Telford, R. J., Vandvik, V. & Birks, H. J. B. Dispersal limitations matter for microbial morphospecies. Science 312, 1015 (2006).

A journal article with 6 or more authors

Korb, J., Weil, T., Hoffmann, K., Foster, K. R. & Rehli, M. A gene necessary for reproductive suppression in termites. Science 324, 758 (2009).

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Manuele, F. A. Advanced Safety Management Focusing on Z10 and Serious Injury Prevention. (John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ, 2007).

An edited book

The Melanin Millennium: Skin Color as 21st Century International Discourse. (Springer Netherlands, Dordrecht, 2013).

A chapter in an edited book

Berwanger, D. & Janin, D. Automata on Directed Graphs: Edge Versus Vertex Marking. in Graph Transformations: Third International Conference, ICGT 2006 Natal, Rio Grande do Norte, Brazil, September 17-23, 2006 Proceedings (eds. Corradini, A., Ehrig, H., Montanari, U., Ribeiro, L. & Rozenberg, G.) 46–60 (Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, 2006).

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. Watch As Great White Shark Steals Bag of Chum From Boat. 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. Information Technology: Management and Oversight of Projects Totaling Billions of Dollars Need Attention. (2009).

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Kim, H. Empathy in the Early Childhood Classroom: Exploring Teachers’ Perceptions, Understanding and Practices. (Indiana University, Bloomington, IN, 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

Chira, S. Powerful Woman? Yes. ‘Feminist’? No. New York Times SR6 (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 Geoscience
Abbreviation	Nat. Geosci.
ISSN (print)	1752-0894
ISSN (online)	1752-0908
Scope	General Earth and Planetary Sciences