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If you're trying to determine what source to choose or what you should cite, read on for FAQs and helpful answers.

I'm citing a book, article, video, photo, etc., that I found online. Does that mean it's a "website"?

If you can classify your source as something other than a website/web page, choose that as your source. Be as specific as possible. Most times, the source citation form will give you the option to cite the source as something found online (see tabs at the top of the citation form).

• E-book -- choose "Book"
• Online newspaper article -- choose "Newspaper"
• Digital photo -- choose "Photo"

What's the difference between an "Online database" and a "Journal"?

In research, a journal is a scholarly or academic periodical featuring articles written by experts. These articles are reviewed by fellow experts (peer-reviewed) before being published.

An online database is an electronic collection of information. They are searchable and most databases found at your library provide credible, published content. Depending on the database, it might also let you access information in various formats (e.g., journals, videos, books, newspapers, etc.).

This means an online database could have several journals.

• Journals -- Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), PLOS One, New Scientist, Ecology Letters
• Online databases --- Academic One File, Britannica Academic, EBSCOHost, Facts on File

I'm still not sure what source I have. What should I do?

Scroll through our long list of source options and make your best educated guess. If you're still unsure, choose "Miscellaneous."

If there is no author, can I still cite a source?

Yes! It's always better to cite a source, even if you're unsure of all the source details. Also, not everything has an indicated author so it's ok to leave an author out in those cases. When this happens, most citation styles will list the source by its title instead of the author's last name.

I only need to cite one source, right?

A well-balanced paper usually cites several sources; often in different formats (e.g., books, journals, interviews, etc.). There isn't an exact number of sources that is ideal, but try to have more than a couple sources listed.

Also, you should cite everything you've consulted or mentioned in your paper. It's the ethical thing to do.

If I have a full citation at the end of my paper, do I really need to make in-text citations (e.g., parenthetical citations, footnotes, etc.)?

Yes, absolutely! Showing where you got certain ideas or points in your paper will help support any arguments you make. Including in-text citations is also ethical — give credit where it is due.

I heard that "common knowledge" does NOT need to be cited. What is it?

Common knowledge is general information that you can assume a normal individual would know without needing to consult a source. Yes, you do not necessarily need to cite common knowledge. However, if you are unsure if you should cite a fact or source, err on the side of caution and cite it.

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References & Article Types

Reference managers (or reference formatting software such as BibTeX for LaTeX documents) make it easy to organize and format citations. They can also assist with managing libraries containing citations, PDFs, and image files by organizing important documents by subject and allowing you to search your library using keywords. Add and organize any papers that are relevant to your research as you read them. This will help you remember to appropriately cite articles that you have read.

Some widely used reference management and formatting software applications are:

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It is helpful to familiarize yourself with the different types of articles published by journals. Although it may appear there are a large number of types of articles published due to the wide variety of names they are published under, most articles published are one of the following types; Original Research, Review Articles, Short reports or Letters, Case Studies, Methodologies.

Original Research:

This is the most common type of journal manuscript used to publish full reports of data from research. It may be called an Original Article, Research Article, Research, or just Article, depending on the journal. The Original Research format is suitable for many different fields and different types of studies. It includes a full Introduction, Methods, Results, and Discussion sections.

Short reports or Letters:

These papers communicate brief reports of data from original research that editors believe will be interesting to many researchers, and that will likely stimulate further research in that  field. As they are relatively short, the format is useful for scientists and other scholarly researchers with results that are time sensitive (for example, those in highly competitive or quickly-changing disciplines). This format often has strict length limits, so some experimental details may not be published until the author writes a full Original Research manuscript. These papers are also sometimes called Brief communications.

Review Articles:

We mentioned review articles earlier in this tutorial. Many researchers often begin their background work by reading these articles. Journal Editors typically invite leading researchers to write these articles to survey, catalog, and summarize a field’s current state. As these articles present a fundamental background to current research, many authors cite them when publishing their own work. 

Case Studies:

These articles report specific instances of interesting phenomena. Case Studies help make other researchers aware of the possibility that a specific phenomenon might occur. Common in medicine, they report the occurrence of previously unknown or emerging pathologies.

Methodologies or Methods:

These articles present a new experimental method, test or procedure. The method described may either be completely new, or may offer a better version of an existing method. The article should describe a demonstrable advance on what is currently available.

Next : Titles, Abstracts & Keywords

TIP: When using a reference manager, make sure you have the correct style file for your target journal. The reference style used by the journal can usually be found in the Instructions for Authors on their website. Formatting references using a reference manager with a style file is very simple.

TIP: If you would like to write a Review but have not been invited by a journal, be sure to check the journal website as some journals to not consider unsolicited Reviews. If the website does not mention whether Reviews are commissioned it is wise to send a pre-submission enquiry letter to the journal editor to propose your Review manuscript before you spend time writing it.   

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• Have other credible individuals referenced this source or author?
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• Is the purpose of the content to inform, entertain, or to spread an agenda? Is there commercial intent?
• Are there ads?
• When was the source published or updated? Is there a date shown?
• Does the publication date make sense in relation to the information presented to your argument?
• Does the source even have a date?
• Was it reproduced? If so, from where?
• If it was reproduced, was it done so with permission? Copyright/disclaimer included?

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Filled with a wide variety of examples and visuals, our Citation Machine® MLA guide will help you master the citation process. Learn how to cite websites, books, journal articles, magazines, newspapers, films, social media, and more!

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Our Citation Machine® APA guide is a one-stop shop for learning how to cite in APA format. Read up on what APA is, or use our citing tools and APA examples to create citations for websites, books, journals, and more!

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Reference a Website in Harvard Style | Templates & Examples

Published on 19 May 2020 by Jack Caulfield . Revised on 7 November 2022.

To reference a website in Harvard style , include the name of the author or organization, the year of publication, the title of the page, the URL, and the date on which you accessed the website.

Different formats are used for other kinds of online source, such as articles, social media posts and multimedia content. You can generate accurate Harvard references for all kinds of sources with our free reference generator:

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Table of contents

Online articles, social media posts, images, videos and podcasts, referencing websites with missing information, frequently asked questions about harvard website references.

Blog posts and online newspaper articles are both referenced in the same format: include the title of the article in quotation marks, the name of the blog or newspaper in italics, and the date of publication.

The format for a magazine article is slightly different. Instead of a precise date, include the month, season, or volume and issue number, depending on what the magazine uses to identify its issues.

The URL and access date information are included only when the article is online-exclusive.

Prevent plagiarism, run a free check.

To reference posts from social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, include the username and the platform in square brackets. Write usernames the way they appear on the platform, with the same capitalization and symbols.

If the post has a title, use it (in quotation marks). If the post is untitled, use the text of the post instead. Do not use italics. If the text is long, you can replace some of it with an ellipsis.

Online content is referenced differently if it is in video, audio or image form.

To cite an image found online, such as an artwork, photograph, or infographic, include the image format (e.g. ‘Photograph’, ‘Oil on canvas’) in square brackets.

Online videos, such as those on YouTube, Instagram, Vimeo and Dailymotion, are cited similarly to general web pages. Where a video is uploaded under the name of an individual, write the name in the usual format. Otherwise, write the username of the uploader as it appears on the site.

If you want to locate a specific point in a video in an in-text citation, you can do so using a timestamp.

For a podcast reference, you just need the name of the individual episode, not of the whole series. The word ‘Podcast’ is always included in square brackets. As with videos, you can use a timestamp to locate a specific point in the in-text citation.

Online sources are often missing information you would usually need for a citation: author, title or date. Here’s what to do when these details are not available.

When a website doesn’t list a specific individual author, you can usually find a corporate author to list instead. This is the organisation responsible for the source:

In cases where there’s no suitable corporate author (such as online dictionaries or Wikis), use the title of the source in the author position instead:

In Harvard style, when a source doesn’t list a specific date of publication, replace it with the words ‘no date’ in both the in-text citation and the reference list. You should still include an access date:

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It’s important to assess the reliability of information found online. Look for sources from established publications and institutions with expertise (e.g. peer-reviewed journals and government agencies).

The CRAAP test (currency, relevance, authority, accuracy, purpose) can aid you in assessing sources, as can our list of credible sources . You should generally avoid citing websites like Wikipedia that can be edited by anyone – instead, look for the original source of the information in the “References” section.

You can generally omit page numbers in your in-text citations of online sources which don’t have them. But when you quote or paraphrase a specific passage from a particularly long online source, it’s useful to find an alternate location marker.

For text-based sources, you can use paragraph numbers (e.g. ‘para. 4’) or headings (e.g. ‘under “Methodology”’). With video or audio sources, use a timestamp (e.g. ‘10:15’).

In Harvard referencing, up to three author names are included in an in-text citation or reference list entry. When there are four or more authors, include only the first, followed by ‘ et al. ’

A Harvard in-text citation should appear in brackets every time you quote, paraphrase, or refer to information from a source.

The citation can appear immediately after the quotation or paraphrase, or at the end of the sentence. If you’re quoting, place the citation outside of the quotation marks but before any other punctuation like a comma or full stop.

Cite this Scribbr article

If you want to cite this source, you can copy and paste the citation or click the ‘Cite this Scribbr article’ button to automatically add the citation to our free Reference Generator.

Caulfield, J. (2022, November 07). Reference a Website in Harvard Style | Templates & Examples. Scribbr. Retrieved 21 May 2024, from https://www.scribbr.co.uk/referencing/harvard-website-reference/

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Avoid plagiarism — quickly check for missing citations and check for writing mistakes., is this source credible consider the criteria below..

Is the purpose to entertain, sell, persuade, or inform/teach ? Journal articles are often designed to inform or teach. Books and websites could have any of these or a combination of the purposes above. So it is important to determine why the source was created and if it is appropriate for your research. For websites in particular, looking at their "About Us" page or "Mission Statement" can help you evaluate purpose.

Accuracy is the reliability and truthfulness of the source. Here are a few indicators of an accurate source:

• Citations or a works cited list. For websites, this can be links to other credible sites.
• Evidence that backs up claims made by the author(s).
• Text that is free of spelling and grammatical errors.
• Information that matches that in other, credible sources.
• Language that is unbiased and free of emotion.

Based on the above the source could be accurate, inaccurate, a mixture of accurate and inaccurate, or hard to tell.

Authority: Author

The author is the individual or organization who wrote the information in the book, in the journal article, or on the website. If no author is listed, there may be another contributor instead. For example, an editor or a translator. A credible author has:

• Written several articles or books on the topic.
• Provided contact information. For example, an email address, mailing address, social media account, etc.
• The experience or qualifications to be an expert on the topic.

Authority: Publisher

The credibility of the publisher can contribute to the authority of a source. The publisher can be a person, company or organization. Authoritative publishers:

• Accept responsibility for content.
• Are often well-known.
• Often publish multiple works on the same or related topics.

Relevance describes how related or important a source is to your topic. While a source may be credible, it does not necessarily mean it is relevant to your assignment. To determine relevance, you should:

• Determine the website's intended audience. Look at the level of the information and the tone of the writing. For example, is it meant for academics or the general public?
• Make sure that the information is related to your research topic.
• Make sure that the information helps you answer your research question.

A publication date is an important part of evaluating the credibility of a source and its appropriateness for your topic. It is generally best to use content that was recently published or updated, but depending on your assignment, it may be appropriate to use older information. For example, a journal entry from Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War is too outdated to use in a discussion about modern politics and war, but would be appropriate for a paper about the Civil War. Consider the following when evaluating currency:

• Was it published or updated recently? If a website, is there even a publication date listed?
• Is the date of the source appropriate or inappropriate for my assignment?

After analyzing your source, do you believe it is credible, not credible, partially credible, or are you unsure? If you are still unsure, it may help to ask your instructor a librarian for assistance.

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I was just wondering, what is the format for Nature style citation? Or other citation styles?

There are at least two ways to find the answer to this.

1. Find the journal's home page and look for a page entitled "information for authors" or something similar. For example for Nature the route is: For authors/Getting published in Nature/Manuscript FormattingGuide/ 5.4 References .

2. Login to your RefWorks account, select a few citations, then go through the steps to Create a Bibliography...Preview Output Style...open the drop menu box and scroll through the thousands of options till you find the journal.

2a. Many of the citation management softwares will also do this for you.

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Nature Communications Referencing Guide (updated May 2024)

This is the citationsy guide to nature communications citations, reference lists, in-text citations, and bibliographies. the complete, comprehensive guide shows you how easy citing any source can be. referencing books, youtube videos, websites, articles, journals, podcasts, images, videos, or music in nature communications..

How do you cite a book in the Nature Communications referencing style? (2024 Guide)

How to reference a journal article in the nature communications citation style, how do you cite scientific papers in nature communications format, how to cite a website in a paper in nature communications style, how to cite a youtube video nature communications in 2024, how to cite a podcast using nature communications referencing style, how to cite a piece of music or a song using nature communications referencing style.

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🤔 What is an APA Citation Generator?

An APA citation generator is a software tool that will automatically format academic citations in the American Psychological Association (APA) style.

It will usually request vital details about a source -- like the authors, title, and publish date -- and will output these details with the correct punctuation and layout required by the official APA style guide.

Formatted citations created by a generator can be copied into the bibliography of an academic paper as a way to give credit to the sources referenced in the main body of the paper.

👩‍🎓 Who uses an APA Citation Generator?

College-level and post-graduate students are most likely to use an APA citation generator, because APA style is the most favored style at these learning levels. Before college, in middle and high school, MLA style is more likely to be used. In other parts of the world styles such as Harvard (UK and Australia) and DIN 1505 (Europe) are used more often.

🙌 Why should I use a Citation Generator?

Like almost every other citation style, APA style can be cryptic and hard to understand when formatting citations. Citations can take an unreasonable amount of time to format manually, and it is easy to accidentally include errors. By using a citation generator to do this work you will:

• Save a considerable amount of time
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In academia, bibliographies are graded on their accuracy against the official APA rulebook, so it is important for students to ensure their citations are formatted correctly. Special attention should also be given to ensure the entire document (including main body) is structured according to the APA guidelines. Our complete APA format guide has everything you need know to make sure you get it right (including examples and diagrams).

⚙️ How do I use MyBib's APA Citation Generator?

Our APA generator was built with a focus on simplicity and speed. To generate a formatted reference list or bibliography just follow these steps:

• Start by searching for the source you want to cite in the search box at the top of the page.
• MyBib will automatically locate all the required information. If any is missing you can add it yourself.
• Your citation will be generated correctly with the information provided and added to your bibliography.
• Repeat for each citation, then download the formatted list and append it to the end of your paper.

MyBib supports the following for APA style:

Daniel is a qualified librarian, former teacher, and citation expert. He has been contributing to MyBib since 2018.

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How to format your references using the Nature Methods citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Nature Methods. 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:

• 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.

• Books and book chapters

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

Sometimes references to web sites should appear directly in the text rather than in the bibliography. Refer to the Instructions to authors for Nature Methods .

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".

• Theses and dissertations

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

• 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.

• In-text citations

References should be cited in the text by sequential numbers in superscript :

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A new campaign wants to redefine the word ‘nature’ to include humans – here’s why this linguistic argument matters

Professor of Applied Ecology, University of Reading

Disclosure statement

Tom Oliver has received research funding from BBSRC, NERC and Natural England for quantifying climate change impacts on biodiversity and developing climate adaptation plans for humans and other species. He was affiliated with Defra as a senior scientific fellow on their Systems Research Programme, with the Government Office for Science working on long-term risks to the UK, and spent four years with the European Environment Agency on their scientific committee. He sits on the Food Standards Agency science council and Office for Environmental Protection expert college. He is author of The Self Delusion: The Surprising Science of Our Connection To Each Other and the Natural World, published by Weidenfeld and Nicholson.

University of Reading provides funding as a member of The Conversation UK.

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What does the word nature mean to you? Does it conjure visions of wild places away from the hustle and bustle of people, or does it include humans too? The meaning of nature has changed since the word was first used back as early as the 15th century .

Now a new campaign, We Are Nature , aims to persuade dictionaries to include humans in their definitions of nature. This campaign, a collaboration between a group of lawyers and a design company, involves a petition and open letter , as well as a collection of alternative definitions supplied by various thinkers and authors (including me). Here’s my definition of nature:

The living world comprised as the total set of organisms and relationships between them. These organisms include bacteria, fungi, plants and animals (including humans). Some definitions may also include non-living entities as part of nature – such as mountains, waterfalls and cloud formations – in recognition of their important role underpinning the web of life.

Derived from the Latin natura , literally meaning “birth”, nature used to only refer to the innate qualities or essential disposition of something. But over time, it also began to describe something “other” or separate to humans. For example, the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) defines nature as :

The phenomena of the physical world collectively; esp. plants, animals, and other features and products of the Earth itself, as opposed to humans and human creations.

But how did we arrive at such a definition, which hinges on us being apart from, rather than a part of, the natural world? Since the 17th century, a rationalist world view prompted by philosophers such as René Descartes increasingly saw things from a mechanical perspective, comparing the workings of the universe to a great machine. Rather than any kind of divine spirit inhabiting the natural world, this perspective emphasised the split between the human mind and physical matter.

Anything non-human fell into the latter category and was likened to clockwork machinery. But that view has since been found to lead to animal cruelty , and many environmental bodies including the European Environment Agency suggest this disconnect is accelerating the decline of nature.

Is it OK to change words in a dictionary through lobbying? There are two lines of thought here. One might argue yes, if the scientific evidence suggests the distinction between nature and humans is illusory – something I have argued based on findings in biology, ecology and neuroscience.

A dictionary definition represents society’s framing of the natural world. This in turn influences our perception of our place within it – and the actions we take to protect nature. So, the words we use have real-world impacts: they frame how we think and determine how we feel and act. Linguist George Lakoff has argued that they ultimately structure our society.

My children are growing up in a world where humans feel disconnected with nature – indeed, the UK ranks among the most disconnected countries. Research shows this leads people to make fewer positive environmental changes to their behaviour , such as reducing their carbon footprint, recycling, or doing voluntary conservation work.

Conversely, when people feel they are enmeshed with nature, they are not only greener in their behaviour but they tend to be happier . So I absolutely want my kids to grow up feeling they are part of nature.

There are some words that I certainly recommend we use less. I dislike the term “natural capital”, referring to nature as an asset that can be commodified and sold . These words have a place with professional environmentalists and policy, but they can also create psychological distancing and make us care less for natural world.

One sustainability-focused communications agency found the best way to motivate people about protecting nature is through messages based on awe and wonder , rather than the economic value of nature. Scientific studies back this up.

Dangers of controlling language

But I’m torn. Another line of thought suggests it’s not OK to change the meaning of words through lobbying, and that dictionaries should reflect how words are being used – the OED takes this position .

Dystopian fiction, including George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four , highlights the dangers of a world where controlling the language allows control of the population. Dictionaries bowing to pressure from lobbying seems to set a dangerous precedent.

With regards to the meaning of nature, if a word is too broad, it may lose its usefulness in communication, just like a blunt knife is a poor tool for carving food. People wanting to articulate the natural world may simply use other words, such as “environment”. This word is derived from the French environs , explicitly describing something surrounding us.

Environment has already been replacing nature in our modern lexicon. This may reflect a subtle cognitive shift towards increasingly seeing human beings as distinct entities, separate from the natural world.

Nature v environment: tracking the use of these words

But the We Are Nature campaign is not just lobbying the OED based on a preferred use of language. The organisers have collated many historical uses of the word nature from 1850 to the present day, some of which include humans in the meaning, and presented the dictionary with this evidence. In April 2024, as a result, the OED removed the label “obsolete” from a secondary, wider definition of nature comprising “the whole natural world, including human beings”.

But to change the primary definition of nature from “as opposed to humans” to “including humans” will require more people to use the word in a way that reflects how humans are intertwined with the whole web of life.

The great thing is, by doing this, we rekindle the bonds of care towards the living world around us. And by dispelling the illusion of our separation from nature, we can also expect to live happier lives . Words matter – there is restoration and joy from talking about how we are nature.

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Trump’s Truth Social account shares video referencing ‘unified Reich’

The Biden campaign said text in the video foreshadowing a Trump victory echoes Nazi Germany. The Trump campaign said this was not a campaign video.

A video posted to a Donald Trump social media account featured references to “the creation of a unified Reich” along with hypothetical news headlines should the former president win the election in 2024.

In the 30-second video posted Monday, which was deleted from Trump’s Truth Social account Tuesday morning, mock-up headlines and newspaper clippings envisioned media coverage after a potential Trump victory.

Under a black-and-white photo of Trump, one all-caps headline states: “What’s next for America?” with text underneath that reads: “Strength significantly increased by the creation of a unified Reich.”

The term “reich” — meaning empire in German — is associated with Nazi Germany under Adolf Hitler, who designated his Nazi regime as the “Third Reich.” Mentions of a “unified Reich” in the video appear to refer to the formation of the German empire in 1871 by unifying several smaller states.

In a statement, Trump campaign spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said the video was not produced by the campaign and that it was posted while Trump was in court in New York on Monday for his ongoing hush money trial. The video, she said, “was created by a random account online and reposted by a staffer who clearly did not see the word.”

Based on the time stamp on Truth Social, the video appears to have been posted toward the end of a lunch break Monday in the trial.

The video appears to feature parts of a sentence referring to a “unified Reich” three times alongside text saying Trump “puts America first” or “Law & order restored.” One such reference said: “German industrial strength and production had significantly increased after 1871, driven by the creation of a unified Reich.”

As the Associated Press first reported, the line appears verbatim in a Wikipedia entry on World War I, which resulted in the collapse of the German empire.

Other fictional headlines include “It’s a landslide” and “Economy booms,” envisioning that the “border is closed” and 15 million migrants deported during a second Trump term.

President Biden’s campaign team seized on the video, writing on X: “Trump posts a new ad foreshadowing a second Trump term that says he will create a ‘UNIFIED REICH,’ echoing Nazi Germany.”

“Donald Trump is not playing games; he is telling America exactly what he intends to do if he regains power: rule as a dictator over a ‘unified reich,’” Biden spokesman James Singer said .

In a statement later Tuesday, the Biden campaign criticized Trump for taking 19 hours to delete the video.

“He’s a threat to our democracy, and Americans must reject him and stand up for our democracy this November,” Singer said.

Trump has faced criticism for using language echoing Hitler before.

On Veterans Day last November, for instance, the former president called his domestic opponents and critics “vermin,” language that drew rebukes from historians who said it echoed Hitler and Italian dictator Benito Mussolini.

In December, Trump said that undocumented immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country” — a phrase that immigrant groups say echoed Hitler’s characterization of Jews and other minorities.

Monday’s video was posted as Trump accused Biden of having a weak response to antisemitism.

Election 2024

Get the latest news on the 2024 election from our reporters on the campaign trail and in Washington.

Who is running? President Biden and Donald Trump secured their parties’ nominations for the presidency . Here’s how we ended up with a Trump-Biden rematch again.

Key dates and events: From January to June, voters in all states and U.S. territories will pick their party’s nominee for president ahead of the summer conventions. Here are key dates and events on the 2024 election calendar .

Abortion and the election: Voters in about a dozen states could decide the fate of abortion rights with constitutional amendments on the ballot in a pivotal election year. Biden supports legal access to abortion , and he has encouraged Congress to pass a law that would codify abortion rights nationwide. After months of mixed signals about his position, Trump said the issue should be left to states . Here’s how Biden’s and Trump’s abortion stances have shifted over the years.

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• 08 May 2024

Major AlphaFold upgrade offers boost for drug discovery

• Ewen Callaway

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An AlphaFold3 model of a bacterial enzyme bound to a chemical. Credit: Isomorphic Labs

Since the powerhouse artificial intelligence (AI) tool AlphaFold2 was released in 2021, scientists have used the protein-structure-prediction model to map one of our cells’ biggest machines, discover drugs and chart the universe of every known protein.

Despite such successes, John Jumper — who leads AlphaFold’s development at Google DeepMind in London — is regularly asked whether the tool can do more. Requests include the ability to predict the shape of proteins that contain function-altering modifications, or their structure alongside those of DNA, RNA and other cellular players that are crucial to a protein’s duties. “I would say ‘no, you can’t put that into AlphaFold’,” Jumper says. “I would rather solve their problems.”

What’s next for AlphaFold and the AI protein-folding revolution

The latest version of AlphaFold, described on 8 May in Nature 1 , aims to do just that — by giving scientists the ability to predict the structures of proteins during interactions with other molecules. But whereas DeepMind made the 2021 version of the tool freely available to researchers without restriction, AlphaFold3 is limited to non-commercial use through a DeepMind website.

Frank Uhlmann, a biochemist at the Francis Crick Institute in London who gained early access to AlphaFold3, has been impressed with its capabilities. “This is just revolutionary,” he says. “It’s going to democratize structural-biology research.”

Another revolution

“Revolutionary” is how many scientists have described the impact of AlphaFold2 on biology since it was unleashed 2 ( the first version 3 , released in 2020, was good, but not game-changing, Jumper has said). The AI predicts a protein’s structures from its amino-acid sequence, often with startling accuracy that is on par with that of experimental methods.

A freely available AlphaFold database holds the predicted structure of nearly every known protein. The availability of the AlphaFold2 code has also allowed other researchers to easily build on it: an early hack enabled the prediction of interactions between multiple proteins, a capability included in an update to AlphaFold2.

Jumper’s ennui over explaining AlphaFold’s inability to predict other aspects of a protein’s ecosystem stems from their importance: protein modifications, such as the addition of a phosphate molecule, can allow cells to respond to external cues, an infection, for instance, and set off a chain of events in response. Interactions with DNA, RNA and other chemicals are essential to many proteins’ duties.

Real-world examples of these interactions are readily available in the Protein Data Bank (PDB), a repository of experimentally determined structures that is the foundation of AlphaFold’s capabilities. An ideal tool would be able to predict structures of a protein alongside its accessories, says Jumper. “We want to solve the whole PDB.”

Major upgrade

To create AlphaFold3, Jumper, DeepMind chief executive Demis Hassabis and their colleagues made large changes to its predecessor: the latest version depends less on information about proteins related to a target sequence, for instance. AlphaFold3 also uses a type of machine-learning network — called a diffusion model — that is used by image-generating AIs such as Midjourney. “It’s a pretty substantial change,” says Jumper.

AlphaFold’s new rival? Meta AI predicts shape of 600 million proteins

AlphaFold3, the researchers found, substantially outperforms existing software tools at predicting the structure of proteins and their partners. For instance, scientists — especially those interested in finding new drugs — have conventionally used ‘docking’ software to physically model how well chemicals bind to proteins (usually with help from the proteins’ experimentally determined structures). AlphaFold3 proved superior to two docking programs, as well as to another AI-based tool called RoseTTAFold All-Atom 4 .

Uhlmann’s team has used AlphaFold3 to predict the structure of DNA-interacting proteins involved in copying the genome, a step that is essential to cell division. Experiments in which proteins are mutated to alter such interactions suggest that the predictions were usually spot on, Uhlmann says. “It’s an amazing discovery tool,” he adds.

“The structure-prediction performance of AlphaFold3 is very impressive,” says David Baker, a computational biophysicist at the University of Washington in Seattle. It’s better than RoseTTAFold All-Atom, which his team developed 4 , he adds.

Restricted access

Unlike RoseTTAFold and AlphaFold2, scientists will not be able to run their own version of AlphaFold3, nor will the code underlying AlphaFold3 or other information obtained after training the model be made public. Instead, researchers will have access to an ‘AlphaFold3 server’, on which they can input their protein sequence of choice, alongside a selection of accessory molecules.

How AlphaFold can realize AI’s full potential in structural biology

Uhlmann likes what he has so far seen of the server, which he says is simpler and quicker than the version of AlphaFold2 that he has access to at his institute. “You upload it and 10 minutes later, you’ve got the structures,” he says. For most scientists, “the server is really going to smash it. Everybody can do it.”

Access to the AlphaFold3 server, however, is limited. Scientists are currently restricted to 10 predictions a day, and it is not possible to obtain structures of proteins bound to possible drugs.

Isomorphic Labs, a DeepMind spin-off company in London, is using AlphaFold3 to develop drugs, both through its own pipeline and with other pharmaceutical companies. “We have to strike a balance between making sure that this is accessible and has the impact in the scientific community as well as not compromising Isomorphic’s ability to pursue commercial drug discovery,” says Pushmeet Kohli, DeepMind’s head of AI science and a study co-author.

Because of the restriction on modelling protein interactions with possible drugs, “I can’t see it having the impact AlphaFold2 had”, says Brian Shoichet, a pharmaceutical chemist at the University of California, San Francisco, who has been using AlphaFold structures to hunt for therapeutic candidates.

Sergey Ovchinnikov, an evolutionary biologist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, had hoped to develop a web version of AlphaFold3, as he and his colleagues have done for AlphaFold2 shortly after its code was released. But based on the ample information provided in the latest Nature paper, it shouldn’t take long for other teams to create their own versions, he says. “I would expect open-source solutions before the end of the year.”

Nature 629 , 509-510 (2024)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-024-01383-z

Abramson, J. et al. Nature https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-024-07487-w (2024).

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The United States should slap sanctions on International Criminal Court officials who seek an arrest warrant for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, a top foreign policy adviser to Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump said on Tuesday after meeting the Israeli leader.