How to format your references using the Nature Materials citation style

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

Taylor, W. R. A ‘periodic table’ for protein structures. Nature 416, 657–660 (2002).

A journal article with 2 authors

Kane, C. L. & Mele, E. J. Physics. A new spin on the insulating state. Science 314, 1692–1693 (2006).

A journal article with 3 authors

Whitaker, R. J., Grogan, D. W. & Taylor, J. W. Geographic barriers isolate endemic populations of hyperthermophilic archaea. Science 301, 976–978 (2003).

A journal article with 6 or more authors

Wang, L. et al. Polarized linewidth-controllable double-trapping electromagnetically induced transparency spectra in a resonant plasmon nanocavity. Sci. Rep. 3, 2879 (2013).

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Inness, P. & Dorling, S. Operational Weather Forecasting. (John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, 2012).

An edited book

Knowledge Management for Educational Innovation: IFIP WG 3.7 7th Conference on Information Technology in Educational Management (ITEM), Hamamatsu, Japan, July 23–26, 2006. vol. 230 (Springer US, 2007).

A chapter in an edited book

VanDerwarker, A. M. & Wilson, G. D. War, Food, and Structural Violence in the Mississippian Central Illinois Valley. in The Archaeology of Food and Warfare: Food Insecurity in Prehistory (eds. VanDerwarker, A. M. & Wilson, G. D.) 75–105 (Springer International Publishing, 2016).

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 Materials.

Blog post

Fang, J. Sturdy 3D Material Behaves Like Graphene. 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. Computer-Based Patient Records: Sound Planning and Project Management Are Needed to Achieve a Two-Way Exchange of VA and DOD Health Data. (2004).

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Altiparmak, F. Online Management and Mining of Heteregenous and Dynamic Time Series. (Ohio State University, 2008).

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

Johnson, G. A Carnival of Consciousness. New York Times D5 (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 Materials
Abbreviation	Nat. Mater.
ISSN (print)	1476-1122
ISSN (online)	1476-4660
Scope	General Chemistry Mechanical Engineering Mechanics of Materials General Materials Science Condensed Matter Physics