How to format your references using the Nucleus citation style

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

Vrakking M. Journal club. A physicist discusses how to visualize a molecule changing shape. Nature 2010; 465:271.

A journal article with 2 authors

Gaidos EJ, Nimmo F. Tectonics and water on Europa. Nature 2000; 405:637.

A journal article with 3 authors

Glazier AM, Nadeau JH, Aitman TJ. Finding genes that underlie complex traits. Science 2002; 298:2345–9.

A journal article with 11 or more authors

Zhang P, Xiao BB, Hou XL, Zhu YF, Jiang Q. Layered SiC sheets: a potential catalyst for oxygen reduction reaction. Sci Rep 2014; 4:3821.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Wuestenberg K. Clinical Small Animal Care. Ames, Iowa, USA: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.; 2012.

An edited book

Lin Z. Probability Inequalities. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer; 2011.

A chapter in an edited book

Morgenstern R, Morgenstern C. Assessment and Selection of the Appropriate Individualized Technique for Endoscopic Lumbar Disc Surgery. In: Menchetti PPM, editor. Minimally Invasive Surgery of the Lumbar Spine. London: Springer; 2014. page 107–20.

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 Nucleus.

Blog post

Carpineti A. This Distant Galaxy Is A Star-Forming Champion [Internet]. IFLScience2016 [cited 2018 Oct 30]; Available from: https://www.iflscience.com/space/this-distant-galaxy-is-a-starforming-champion/

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. Rural Children: Increasing Poverty Rates Pose Educational Challenges. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 1994.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

McCarthy AC. Tangle towns tie-breaker: A multidimensional knapsack study. 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

Karr M. JAN. 15, 2006: Thanks for The Memoirs. New York Times2010; :F15.

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	Nucleus
Abbreviation	Nucleus
ISSN (print)	1949-1034
ISSN (online)	1949-1042
Scope	Cell Biology

Research and Writing Guides