How to format your references using the Nucleic Acids Research citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Nucleic Acids Research. 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

1. Woolston,C. (2015) Breast cancer: 4 big questions. Nature, 527, S120.

A journal article with 2 authors

1. Mehta,R.S. and Wainwright,P.C. (2007) Raptorial jaws in the throat help moray eels swallow large prey. Nature, 449, 79–82.

A journal article with 3 authors

1. Stollewerk,A., Schoppmeier,M. and Damen,W.G.M. (2003) Involvement of Notch and Delta genes in spider segmentation. Nature, 423, 863–865.

A journal article with 11 or more authors

1. Shuster,D.L., Ehlers,T.A., Rusmoren,M.E. and Farley,K.A. (2005) Rapid glacial erosion at 1.8 Ma revealed by 4He/3He thermochronometry. Science, 310, 1668–1670.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

1. Atkin,N., Biddiss,M. and Tallett,F. (2011) The Wiley-Blackwell Dictionary of Modern European History Since 1789 Wiley-Blackwell, Oxford, UK.

An edited book

1. Fichtinger,G., Martel,A. and Peters,T. eds. (2011) Medical Image Computing and Computer-Assisted Intervention – MICCAI 2011: 14th International Conference, Toronto, Canada, September 18-22, 2011, Proceedings, Part II Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg.

A chapter in an edited book

1. Kroupa,P., Weidner,C., Pflamm-Altenburg,J., Thies,I., Dabringhausen,J., Marks,M. and Maschberger,T. (2013) The Stellar and Sub-Stellar Initial Mass Function of Simple and Composite Populations. In Oswalt,T.D., Gilmore,G. (eds), Planets, Stars and Stellar Systems: Volume 5: Galactic Structure and Stellar Populations. Springer Netherlands, Dordrecht, pp. 115–242.

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 Nucleic Acids Research.

Blog post

1. O`Callaghan,J. (2017) Incredible New Image Shows Earth From Mars. IFLScience.

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

1. Government Accountability Office (1994) Technology Transfer: Improving the Use of Cooperative R&D Agreements at DOE’s Contractor-Operated Laboratories U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

1. He,H. (2006) Numerical Simulations of Unsteady Flows in a Pulse Detonation Engine by the Space-Time Conservation Element and Solution Element Method.

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

1. Samuels,D. (2016) The Storyteller and the President. New York Times.

In-text citations

References should be cited in the text by sequential numbers in parentheses:

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	Nucleic Acids Research
Abbreviation	Nucleic Acids Res.
ISSN (print)	0305-1048
ISSN (online)	1362-4962
Scope	Genetics