How to format your references using the Annals of Laboratory Medicine citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Annals of Laboratory Medicine (ALM). 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 reference managers.
BibTeX	BibTeX styles 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

Ball P. DNA: Celebrate the unknowns. Nature 2013;496:419–420.

A journal article with 2 authors

Nicholls RJ, Cazenave A. Sea-level rise and its impact on coastal zones. Science 2010;328:1517–1520.

A journal article with 3 authors

Schroeder JI, Kwak JM, Allen GJ. Guard cell abscisic acid signalling and engineering drought hardiness in plants. Nature 2001;410:327–330.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Chi TH, Wan M, Zhao K, Taniuchi I, Chen L, Littman DR, et al. Reciprocal regulation of CD4/CD8 expression by SWI/SNF-like BAF complexes. Nature 2002;418:195–199.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Lad BK, Shrivastava D, Kulkarni MS. Machine Tool Reliability. In: . Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2016.

An edited book

Schultz C, Vind K (eds). Institutions, Equilibria and Efficiency: Essays in Honor of Birgit Grodal. In: . Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer, 2006.

A chapter in an edited book

Gelbukh A, Sidorov G, Lara-Reyes D, Chanona-Hernandez L. Division of Spanish Words into Morphemes with a Genetic Algorithm. In: Kapetanios E, Sugumaran V, Spiliopoulou M (eds) Natural Language and Information Systems: 13th International Conference on Applications of Natural Language to Information Systems, NLDB 2008 London, UK, June 24-27, 2008 Proceedings. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer, 2008, pp. 19–26.

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 Annals of Laboratory Medicine.

Blog post

Taub B. Adult Ants Take Out Hits On Young Males, Causing Death Squads To Rip Them To Shreds. IFLScience, https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/adult-ants-take-out-hits-on-young-males-causing-death-squads-to-rip-them-to-shreds/ (2016, accessed 30 October 2018).

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. From School to Work. In: . 147979, Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1 January 1992.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Finnegan RJ. Information food webs: A quantitative inquiry using a biological food web methodology. In: . Doctoral Dissertation, Capella University, 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

Murphy MJO. 130 Years Ago: ‘War and Peace’ Finally Published in English. New York Times, 29 January 2016, p. C29.

In-text citations

References should be cited in the text by sequential numbers in square brackets:

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	Annals of Laboratory Medicine
ISSN (print)	2234-3806
ISSN (online)	2234-3814
Scope