How to format your references using the Nature Reviews Cancer citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Nature Reviews Cancer. 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	Find the style here: output styles overview
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

Bartram, J. Improving on haves and have-nots. Nature 452, 283–284 (2008).

A journal article with 2 authors

Häkkinen, S. & Rhines, P. B. Decline of subpolar North Atlantic circulation during the 1990s. Science 304, 555–559 (2004).

A journal article with 3 authors

Burke, M. D., Berger, E. M. & Schreiber, S. L. Generating diverse skeletons of small molecules combinatorially. Science 302, 613–618 (2003).

A journal article with 6 or more authors

Deville, P. et al. Career on the move: geography, stratification, and scientific impact. Sci. Rep. 4, 4770 (2014).

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Paret, D. & Huon, J.-P. Secure Connected Objects. (John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2017).

An edited book

Sciences in the Universities of Europe, Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: Academic Landscapes. vol. 309 (Springer Netherlands, 2015).

A chapter in an edited book

Schanz, D. & Schanz, S. Tax Facts. in Business Taxation and Financial Decisions (ed. Schanz, S.) 137–158 (Springer, 2011).

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 Reviews Cancer.

Blog post

Hale, T. Thousands Of Dead Lobsters Are Washing Up On Beaches In California. IFLScience https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/thousands-small-lobsters-are-taking-over-beaches-california/ (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. Telecommunications: Information on Participation in the E-rate Program (GAO-09-254SP, March 2009), an e-supplement to GAO-09-253. (2009).

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Fernandes, J. M. Physical and chemical properties of Jupiter’s north and south polar vortex revealed through mid-infrared imaging. (California State University, Long Beach, 2017).

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

Barron, J. Wounded by ‘Fearless Girl,’ Creator of ‘Charging Bull’ Wants Her to Move. New York Times A18 (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 Reviews Cancer
Abbreviation	Nat. Rev. Cancer
ISSN (print)	1474-175X
ISSN (online)	1474-1768
Scope

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