How to format your references using the Nature Methods citation style

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

Suresh, S. Graded materials for resistance to contact deformation and damage. Science 292, 2447–2451 (2001).

A journal article with 2 authors

Schulz, C. & Rehling, P. Cell biology. Powering the cell cycle. Science 346, 1059–1060 (2014).

A journal article with 3 authors

Ogata, S., Li, J. & Yip, S. Ideal pure shear strength of aluminum and copper. Science 298, 807–811 (2002).

A journal article with 6 or more authors

Sun, J. et al. Magnetic assembly-mediated enhancement of differentiation of mouse bone marrow cells cultured on magnetic colloidal assemblies. Sci. Rep. 4, 5125 (2014).

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Pease, G. Optimize Your Greatest Asset-Your People. (John Wiley & Sons, Inc, Hoboken, NJ, 2015).

An edited book

Lioui, A. Dynamic Asset Allocation with Forwards and Futures. (Springer US, Boston, MA, 2005).

A chapter in an edited book

Ganesamoni, R. & Singh, S. K. Epidemiology of Stone Disease in Northern India. in Urolithiasis: Basic Science and Clinical Practice (eds. Talati, J. J., Tiselius, H.-G., Albala, D. M. & Ye, Z.) 39–46 (Springer, London, 2012).

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 Methods.

Blog post

Davis, J. Mentally Complex Jobs Could Help Protect Against Certain Aspects Of Alzheimer’s. IFLScience https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/mentally-complex-jobs-could-help-protect-against-certain-aspects-of-alzheimers/ (2016).

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. Inquiry About the Research Grant To Develop a Portable Computer To Record Traffic Information for Verifying the Accuracy of Charges for Telecommunications Service. (1974).

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Joseph, S. A comprehensive evaluation of a school system’s grow your own principal preparation program. (George Washington University, Washington, DC, 2009).

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

Dynarski, S. Why Small Student Debt Can Mean Big Problems. New York Times A3 (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 Methods
Abbreviation	Nat. Methods
ISSN (print)	1548-7091
ISSN (online)	1548-7105
Scope	Biochemistry Biotechnology Cell Biology Molecular Biology