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

Mandavilli, A. Leukaemia. Nature 498, S1 (2013).

A journal article with 2 authors

Koechlin, E. & Hyafil, A. Anterior prefrontal function and the limits of human decision-making. Science 318, 594–598 (2007).

A journal article with 3 authors

Guo, G., Wang, W. & Bradley, A. Mismatch repair genes identified using genetic screens in Blm-deficient embryonic stem cells. Nature 429, 891–895 (2004).

A journal article with 6 or more authors

Anderson, R. M., Bitterman, K. J., Wood, J. G., Medvedik, O. & Sinclair, D. A. Nicotinamide and PNC1 govern lifespan extension by calorie restriction in Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Nature 423, 181–185 (2003).

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Avlonas, N. & Nassos, G. P. Practical Sustainability Strategies. (John Wiley & Sons, Inc, Hoboken, NJ, 2013).

An edited book

Hydrogen Bonded Supramolecular Materials. vol. 88 (Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, 2015).

A chapter in an edited book

Hodjat, B. & Shahrzad, H. nPool: Massively Distributed Simultaneous Evolution and Cross-Validation in EC-Star. in Genetic Programming Theory and Practice XIII (eds. Riolo, R., Worzel, W. P., Kotanchek, M. & Kordon, A.) 79–90 (Springer International Publishing, Cham, 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. 7 Deep Sea Dwellers Who Hardly Look Like Animals At All. IFLScience (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. Bridge Safety: Structural Soundness of the Zilwaukee Bridge. (1988).

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Lee, Y.-J. Copying and summarizing: Possible tools to develop English reading and writing for university students of different proficiency levels in Korea. (Indiana University, Bloomington, IN, 2010).

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

Dynarski, S. Where Charter Schools Outperform. New York Times BU6 (2015).

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