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 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

Dando, M. Biologists napping while work militarized. Nature 460, 950–951 (2009).

A journal article with 2 authors

Burton, D. R. & Wilson, I. A. Immunology. Square-dancing antibodies. Science 317, 1507–1508 (2007).

A journal article with 3 authors

Fedorov, A. V., Brierley, C. M. & Emanuel, K. Tropical cyclones and permanent El Niño in the early Pliocene epoch. Nature 463, 1066–1070 (2010).

A journal article with 6 or more authors

Rowe, C. M., Loope, D. B., Oglesby, R. J., Van der Voo, R. & Broadwater, C. E. Inconsistencies between Pangean reconstructions and basic climate controls. Science 318, 1284–1286 (2007).

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Hens, H. Building Physics: Heat, Air and Moisture. (Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim, Germany, 2012).

An edited book

Michelsen, J. Service Virtualization: Reality Is Overrated. (Apress, Berkeley, CA, 2012).

A chapter in an edited book

Liu, X., Zhao, J. & Feng, Z. Instantaneous Motion of a 2-RCR Mechanism with Variable Mobility. in Intelligent Robotics and Applications: 7th International Conference, ICIRA 2014, Guangzhou, China, December 17-20, 2014, Proceedings, Part I (eds. Zhang, X., Liu, H., Chen, Z. & Wang, N.) 44–55 (Springer International Publishing, Cham, 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 Photonics.

Blog post

Hale, T. The Comedy Wildlife Photography Award Finalists Are Absolutely Hilarious. IFLScience (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. Summary Analysis of Federal Commercial Aviation Taxes and Fees. (2004).

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

McCoy, N. Functionality Evaluation of the Wave Suppressor and Sediment Collection (WSSC) System: Wave Reduction, Sediment Collection, Mathematical Model, and Preliminary Field Evaluation. (University of Louisiana, Lafayette, LA, 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

Hollander, S. Running for Herself and in Memory. New York Times F2 (2002).

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