How to format your references using the Nature Medicine citation style

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

Smaglik, P. To plan...or not to plan? Nature 435, 381 (2005).

A journal article with 2 authors

Webster, C. R. & Heymsfield, A. J. Water isotope ratios D/H, 18O/16O, 17O/16O in and out of clouds map dehydration pathways. Science 302, 1742–1745 (2003).

A journal article with 3 authors

Morens, D. M., Folkers, G. K. & Fauci, A. S. The challenge of emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases. Nature 430, 242–249 (2004).

A journal article with 6 or more authors

Kannan, R., Singh, K., Gill, S., Fürstenhaupt, T. & Thangadurai, V. Chemically stable proton conducting doped BaCeO₃ -no more fear to SOFC wastes. Sci. Rep. 3, 2138 (2013).

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Burd, B. Java® For Dummies®. (Wiley Publishing, Inc., 2011).

An edited book

Midline Skull Base Surgery. (Springer International Publishing, 2016).

A chapter in an edited book

Okuno, E. & Fratin, L. Simple Machines. in Biomechanics of the Human Body (ed. Fratin, L.) 77–97 (Springer, 2014).

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 Medicine.

Blog post

Andrew, E. A Simple Daily Pregnancy Pill Could Boost Population IQ And Save The NHS Money. IFLScience https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/simple-daily-pregnancy-pill-could-boost-population-iq-and-save-nhs-money/ (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. Highways and Environment: Transportation Agencies Are Acting to Involve Others in Planning and Environmental Decisions. (2008).

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Yoon, Y. Nano-tribology of discrete track recording media. (University of California San Diego, 2010).

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

Gurley, G. Bright Lights, Big City (Redux). New York Times ST1 (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 Medicine
Abbreviation	Nat. Med.
ISSN (print)	1078-8956
ISSN (online)	1546-170X
Scope	General Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology General Medicine