How to format your references using the Nature Photonics citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Nature Photonics. 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 reference managers.
BibTeX	BibTeX styles 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

Nasmyth, K. Segregating sister genomes: the molecular biology of chromosome separation. Science 297, 559–565 (2002).

A journal article with 2 authors

Long, L. & Ye, H. How to be smart and energy efficient: a general discussion on thermochromic windows. Sci. Rep. 4, 6427 (2014).

A journal article with 3 authors

Siegel, M., Buschman, T. J. & Miller, E. K. Cortical information flow during flexible sensorimotor decisions. Science 348, 1352–1355 (2015).

A journal article with 6 or more authors

Chen, J. et al. Characterization of epistatic interaction of QTLs LH8 and EH3 controlling heading date in rice. Sci. Rep. 4, 4263 (2014).

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Batten, L. M. Public Key Cryptography. (John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ, 2013).

An edited book

Tan, C. M. Electromigration Modeling at Circuit Layout Level. (Springer, Singapore, 2013).

A chapter in an edited book

Hua, C., Zhao, H.-J. & Chen, Y. Mining XML Frequent Query Patterns. in Integration and Innovation Orient to E-Society Volume 1: Seventh IFIP International Conference on e-Business, e-Services, and e-Society (I3E2007), October 10–12, Wuhan, China (eds. Wang, W. et al.) 26–34 (Springer US, Boston, MA, 2008).

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 Photonics.

Blog post

Luntz, S. Investigator Claims To Have Solved The Ripper Mystery Using DNA. 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. Intercity Passenger Rail: Assessing the Benefits of Increased Federal Funding for Amtrak and High-Speed Passenger Rail Systems. (2001).

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Lawrence, B. H. Evaluation of a cultural practice and 2,4-D-based herbicide programs for glyphosateresistant Palmer amaranth management. (Mississippi State University, Mississippi State, MS, 2015).

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

Southall, A. & McKINLEY, J. C., Jr. ‘I Only Wanted to Scare Them’. New York Times MB1 (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 Photonics
Abbreviation	Nat. Photonics
ISSN (print)	1749-4885
ISSN (online)	1749-4893
Scope	Electronic, Optical and Magnetic Materials Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics