Nature references and in-text citations from a DOI, ISBN, URL or title, with the rules explained. Export the list to Word.
Let’s cite!
Paste a DOI, ISBN, PubMed or arXiv ID, a web address, or just a title. Your list is saved in this browser, so you can close the tab and come back to it.
Formatted by citeproc-js © Frank Bennett, unmodified, under the CPAL — citeproc-js implements the Citation Style Language. Styles from the CSL project, CC BY-SA 3.0 (our copies).
Paste a DOI, an ISBN, a link or a title and the tool finds the publisher's own record for it and formats it in Nature — the numbered system used in Nature, Nature Communications, Scientific Reports and the other Nature Portfolio journals, and many life-science preprints written for them. The references entry and the in-text citation come together, and the rules are those of the Nature's formatting guide for authors (Springer Nature, current online version), published by the Nature Portfolio journals. The reference style is shared across the Nature-branded journals and revised with their author guidelines.
Nature journals generate the final references from the manuscript's reference list, so what matters is that every element is present; the tool's RIS and BibTeX exports carry them.
Three steps, about twenty seconds a source.
A DOI, an ISBN, a PubMed or arXiv ID, a web address, or a title. Nature is already selected on this page. The tool works out what you pasted and asks the right catalogue — Crossref, OpenLibrary, PubMed, DataCite or Semantic Scholar — for the record.
Each source gets a card showing what the catalogue held and what the tool changed to fit Nature: a title converted to sentence case, a DOI reduced to its bare form, a page range tidied. Every change can be undone with one click if the record was right as it was.
Copy the list with its formatting into Word or Google Docs, or download a .docx with the numbering and spacing already set. BibTeX, RIS and CSL-JSON exports carry the same data into Zotero, Mendeley, EndNote or LaTeX.
The rules the tool applies, from the Nature's formatting guide for authors (Springer Nature, current online version).
Six real sources — two journal articles, a book, a chapter, a web page and a conference paper — formatted by the same engine that runs the generator above. Nothing here was typed by hand, so what you see is what you get.
1. Golder, S. A. & Macy, M. W. Diurnal and seasonal mood vary with work, sleep, and daylength across diverse cultures. Science 333, 1878–1881 (2011).
In text, citing page 1880: 1
2. Kahneman, D., Knetsch, J. L. & Thaler, R. H. Anomalies: The endowment effect, loss aversion, and status quo bias. Journal of Economic Perspectives 5, 193–206 (1991).
In text: 2
3. Kuhn, T. S. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. (University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 2012).
In text, citing page 12: 3
4. Grice, H. P. Logic and conversation. in Syntax and Semantics, Volume 3: Speech Acts (eds Cole, P. & Morgan, J. L.) 41–58 (Academic Press, New York, 1975).
In text, citing page 45: 4
5. AI Writing Assistant. Free AI writing tools: What each does and when to use it. AI Writing Assistant https://www.aiwritingassistant.net/tools.html.
In text: 5
6. Vaswani, A. et al. Attention is all you need. in Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems 30 5998–6008 (Curran Associates, 2017).
In text: 6
The publishers' records hold 6 of these titles in title case; the tool converted them to sentence case, as Nature requires, and reported each change on its card, where one click keeps the original instead.
Five errors markers see most often, and what the tool does about each.
Nature puts the year in parentheses at the end of the entry, after the pages.
Nature gives volume and pages only: 333, 1878–1881, not 333(6051).
Six or more authors become the first author et al. in the reference list.
The volume is bold in a Nature reference; editors look for it.
Nature uses superscript numbers in the text, not [1].
If your handbook names one of these instead, its page opens the generator with that style selected.
ACS is the other numbered science style with titles included; it separates authors with semicolons and puts the year, in bold, before the volume. Open the ACS page.
Vancouver is what most other biomedical journals use: numbered too, but with closed-up initials, no ampersand and the year before the volume. Open the Vancouver page.
Yes. Every style, every source type and every export is free, with no account and no daily allowance, because the formatting runs in your browser rather than on our servers. Your list is saved in this browser and never sent to us.
The Nature Portfolio author guidelines as reflected in the CSL style, revised in 2026. Each journal in the portfolio applies the same reference style.
A superscript number in the order sources are first cited, placed after the punctuation. The tool prints the in-text form under each reference; turn on the in-text switch above the list if it is hidden.
Paste the address and the tool reads the page's title, author, site name and date where the page declares them, then formats it. The Nature form of a web page with an organisation as author and no date is: 5. AI Writing Assistant. Free AI writing tools: What each does and when to use it. AI Writing Assistant https://www.aiwritingassistant.net/tools.html. Check the author and date on the card — pages often leave them out, and the style has a rule for each case.
Yes. Your sources are stored as data, not as formatted text, so choosing another style in the picker re-formats the whole list at once — APA, MLA, Chicago, Harvard, IEEE, Vancouver, or any of the 10,000 Citation Style Language styles the picker searches.
From the Nature's formatting guide for authors (Springer Nature, current online version), published by the Nature Portfolio journals, as encoded in the open Citation Style Language style the tool uses. Nature journals generate the final references from the manuscript's reference list, so what matters is that every element is present; the tool's RIS and BibTeX exports carry them. Where your department's own guide differs on a detail, the department's guide is the one your marker reads.
Check the essay's grammar, tighten the wording, or summarise a source before you cite it. One plan covers every tool.
Each page opens the generator with that style already selected, shows what the tool prints for six real sources, and explains the style's rules. The picker above the list reaches more than 10,000 styles in all.
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