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

Alesina, A. Economics. Women, fertility, and the rise of modern capitalism. Science 342, 427–428 (2013).

A journal article with 2 authors

deHaseth, P. L. & Nilsen, T. W. Molecular biology. When a part is as good as the whole. Science 303, 1307–1308 (2004).

A journal article with 3 authors

Krug, A. Z., Jablonski, D. & Valentine, J. W. Signature of the end-Cretaceous mass extinction in the modern biota. Science 323, 767–771 (2009).

A journal article with 6 or more authors

Bax, B. D. et al. Type IIA topoisomerase inhibition by a new class of antibacterial agents. Nature 466, 935–940 (2010).

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Center for Chemical Process Safety. A Practical Approach to Hazard Identification for Operations and Maintenance Workers. (John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2010).

An edited book

Production Engineering and Management under Fuzziness. vol. 252 (Springer, 2010).

A chapter in an edited book

Häkkänen, H. A Study of Offense Patterns and Psychopathological Characteristics Among Recidivistic Finnish Homicide Offenders. in Serial Murder and the Psychology of Violent Crimes (ed. Kocsis, R. N.) 51–62 (Humana Press, 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 Reviews Clinical Oncology.

Blog post

Andrew, E. Researchers Translate Chimpanzee ‘Language’. IFLScience https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/researchers-translate-chimpanzee-language/ (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. Land Management Systems: Information on BLM’s Automated Land and Mineral Record System Release 2 Project. (1997).

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Gutierrez, R. Providing Hope: A Systematic Development of a Resource Manual for Mental Health Professionals Treating Latino/a Adolescents with Suicidal Ideation. (Pepperdine University, 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

Isherwood, C. An Unsettling Glimpse Into the Existential Abyss. New York Times C1 (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