How to format your references using the Scientific Reports citation style

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

von Andrian, U. H. Immunology. T cell activation in six dimensions. Science 296, 1815–1817 (2002).

A journal article with 2 authors

Mehta, R. & Zhu, R. J. Blue or red? Exploring the effect of color on cognitive task performances. Science 323, 1226–1229 (2009).

A journal article with 3 authors

Pulendran, B., Palucka, K. & Banchereau, J. Sensing pathogens and tuning immune responses. Science 293, 253–256 (2001).

A journal article with 6 or more authors

Zhang, F. et al. Lacteal junction zippering protects against diet-induced obesity. Science 361, 599–603 (2018).

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Somjit, N., Robertson, I. & Chongcheawchamnan, M. Microwave and Millimetre-Wave Design for Wireless Communications. (John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, 2016).

An edited book

Service-Oriented Computing: 11th International Conference, ICSOC 2013, Berlin, Germany, December 2-5, 2013, Proceedings. vol. 8274 (Springer, 2013).

A chapter in an edited book

Lennon, J. M., Psihogios, A. M., Murray, C. B., Holbein, C. E. & Holmbeck, G. N. Promoting Resilience During the Transition to Adolescence in Chronically Ill Children and Their Families. in Child and Adolescent Resilience Within Medical Contexts: Integrating Research and Practice (eds. DeMichelis, C. & Ferrari, M.) 51–75 (Springer International Publishing, 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 Scientific Reports.

Blog post

Andrew, E. Evolutionary Evidence Shows It’s Time to Revise How We Classify Life on Earth. IFLScience https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/evolutionary-evidence-shows-it-s-time-revise-how-we-classify-life-earth/ (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. Aviation Security: Preliminary Observations on TSA’s Progress to Allow Airports to Use Private Passenger and Baggage Screening Services. (2004).

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

McAlpine, T. E. College students and career: An exploration of vocational anticipatory socialization. (University of North Carolina, 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

Billard, M. Dust Off the Old Stock. New York Times E5 (2010).

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	Scientific Reports
Abbreviation	Sci. Rep.
ISSN (online)	2045-2322
Scope	Multidisciplinary