A Nature Journal Citation Format
The Nature citation is used to format original research for letters and articles. It is important to familiarize yourself with this citation style before using it for your research papers.
References / Bibliography
- For nature style, numbered endnotes take the place of a bibliography.
Note: Do not also use Microsoft Word’s "Insert Endnote†feature because more than one endnote may need to have the same number if it refers to the same reference. You can use EndNote’s Cite While You Write™ application, or you can manually put them at the end of your thesis text. If putting them in manually, the keyboard shortcut to change an endnote number to superscript is CTRL+SHIFT+= in Windows or CMD+SHIFT+= on a Mac.
- If you have, more than five authors provide only the first author followed by et al. in italics. Also, put a space between the first and middle initials.
- Capitalize the first word and the proper nouns in the article title. Do not include chapter titles in the references.
- Italize the journal and book titles. Maintain a regular text for websites and thesis titles. Capitalize each major word of journal, book, website, and thesis titles. A period separates a subtitle from the title for a book. Use standard abbreviations for journal titles.
- Volume numbers are bold.
- List the year of publication inside the parentheses, followed by a period.
Figures
Adjacent to each figure put a legend: Using 12 pt. bold font, begin with the word Figure followed by a space, the number of the figure, a space, a pipe (a vertical line produced with Shift+Back-slash key), a space, and the title of the figure. Capitalize only the first word of the figure title and proper nouns. Label parts of the figure with bold, lower case letters. Refer to your figures in your text with parenthetical notes and abbreviate Figure as Fig.
Tables
- Tables should be created from data gathered by the thesis author rather than copied from published works.
- Above the table, in bold, put the word Table followed by a space, the number of the Table, a space, a pipe (a vertical line produced with Shift+back slash key), a space, and the title of the table.
- Capitalize only the first word of the table title and proper nouns.
- Below the table, define any abbreviations or symbols used in the table, one per line.
- Refer to the table in the text by the word Table followed by its number