How to format your references using the Nature Reviews Clinical Oncology citation style

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

Tsai, J. W. The M.D.-Ph.D. double agent. Science 350, 1434 (2015).

A journal article with 2 authors

Koppers, A. A. P. & Staudigel, H. Asynchronous bends in Pacific seamount trails: a case for extensional volcanism? Science 307, 904–907 (2005).

A journal article with 3 authors

Allard, P., Burton, M. & Muré, F. Spectroscopic evidence for a lava fountain driven by previously accumulated magmatic gas. Nature 433, 407–410 (2005).

A journal article with 6 or more authors

Haller, E. et al. Realization of an excited, strongly correlated quantum gas phase. Science 325, 1224–1227 (2009).

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Schorn, C. & Taylor, B. NMR Spectroscopy: Data Acquisition. (Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim, FRG, 2004).

An edited book

Ghorpade, S. R. A Course in Calculus and Real Analysis. (Springer, New York, NY, 2006).

A chapter in an edited book

Lamont, M. & Guetzkow, J. How Quality Is Recognized by Peer Review Panels: The Case of the Humanities. in Research Assessment in the Humanities: Towards Criteria and Procedures (eds. Ochsner, M., Hug, S. E. & Daniel, H.-D.) 31–41 (Springer International Publishing, Cham, 2016).

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 Clinical Oncology.

Blog post

Hale, T. Apparently No One Knows Where Loofahs Come From. IFLScience https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/your-bathrooms-loofah-probably-isnt-what-you-think-it-is-/ (2017).

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. Information Technology: Leadership Remains Key to Agencies Making Progress on Enterprise Architecture Efforts. (2003).

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Clayton-Clark, C. Academic performance strategies implemented by successful California superintendents in low-performing school districts. (Pepperdine University, Malibu, CA, 2012).

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

Rojas, R. & Fitzsimmons, E. G. Crane Collapse Kills Man on Busy Manhattan Block. New York Times A16 (2016).

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 Clinical Oncology
Abbreviation	Nat. Rev. Clin. Oncol.
ISSN (print)	1759-4774
ISSN (online)	1759-4782
Scope	Oncology