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

Trivedi, B. The primate connection. Nature 466, S5 (2010).

A journal article with 2 authors

Ohta, A. & Sitkovsky, M. Role of G-protein-coupled adenosine receptors in downregulation of inflammation and protection from tissue damage. Nature 414, 916–920 (2001).

A journal article with 3 authors

Durniak, K. J., Bailey, S. & Steitz, T. A. The structure of a transcribing T7 RNA polymerase in transition from initiation to elongation. Science 322, 553–557 (2008).

A journal article with 6 or more authors

Rubin, K. H., van der Zander, I., Smith, M. C. & Bergmanis, E. C. Minimum speed limit for ocean ridge magmatism from 210Pb-226Ra-230Th disequilibria. Nature 437, 534–538 (2005).

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. Guidelines for Safe and Reliable Instrumented Protective Systems. (John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2007).

An edited book

Stone in Architecture: Properties, Durability. (Springer, 2011).

A chapter in an edited book

Hines, M. Gonadal Hormone Influences on Human Neurobehavioral Development: Outcomes and Mechanisms. in Multiple Origins of Sex Differences in Brain: Neuroendocrine Functions and their Pathologies (eds. Pfaff, D. W. & Christen, Y.) 59–69 (Springer, 2013).

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. New Molecule That Mimics Exercise Could Help Treat Obesity and Diabetes. IFLScience (2015).

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. Pell Grants for Prison Inmates. (1994).

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Archibald, G. A. Regionalizing competitive talent: An exploratory study of the role of human capital management in the context of economic integration and labor mobility. (Capella University, 2008).

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

Crow, K. For Homeless Families, A Tiring Trek to School. New York Times 145 (2003).

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

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