Nature · Website
How to cite a website in Nature
A website citation covers pages that exist only online: blog posts, organisation pages, documentation, news pages without a print edition. The classic mistakes are citing the whole site instead of the specific page, and losing the date you read it, which matters because web pages change silently.
Worked example · Nature
1. Lovelace, A. How reading habits shape research skills. Example Research Blog https://www.example.org/reading-habits (2024).
Rendered with the official Nature style file from a placeholder source (reserved example DOI and domain), so the format is exactly what the style produces. In text: Superscript numbers in citation order, with a numbered reference list.
What to collect before you cite a website
- Author (a person if named, otherwise the organisation)
- Title of the specific page, not the site
- Name of the website
- Publication or last-updated date, if shown
- The full URL
- The date you accessed it
Have a DOI? Generate the reference instantly
Journal articles, many books and reports carry a DOI. Paste it and get the Nature entry from the same engine that produced the example above.
Citing a whole thesis, not one source?
CiteDash keeps your bibliography in Nature automatically, verifies every citation against a real paper, and compiles to DOCX, PDF or LaTeX.
Citing a website in Nature: FAQ
The page has no author. What do I do?
Use the organisation as the author, and if there is genuinely none, most styles move the page title into the author position. Do not invent a person.
Do I need the access date?
Collect it always; whether it is printed depends on the style and on whether the page is dated. Web pages change, so the access date is your proof of what you saw.
Can I cite a whole website rather than one page?
Only when you discuss the site itself. If you are using information from a page, cite that page, with its own title and URL.
What does the in-text citation look like in Nature?
Superscript numbers in citation order, with a numbered reference list.
Is the example on this page hand-written?
No. It is rendered by the same citation engine and official CSL style file CiteDash uses for full thesis bibliographies, from a clearly-marked placeholder source, and a test re-renders it on every release so the page can never drift from the engine.