How to format your references using the International Journal of Legal Medicine citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for International Journal of Legal Medicine. 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	Download the output style file
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

Chu S (2002) Cold atoms and quantum control. Nature 416:206–210

A journal article with 2 authors

Lybarger SR, Sandkvist M (2004) Microbiology. A hitchhiker’s guide to type IV secretion. Science 304:1122–1123

A journal article with 3 authors

Grubb PJ, Coomes DA, Metcalfe DJ (2005) Comment on “A brief history of seed size.” Science 310:783; author reply 783

A journal article with 5 or more authors

Mekhail K, Seebacher J, Gygi SP, Moazed D (2008) Role for perinuclear chromosome tethering in maintenance of genome stability. Nature 456:667–670

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Simpkins CA, Simpkins AM (2011) Zen Meditation in Psychotherapy. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ

An edited book

Kuri-Morales A, Simari GR (2010) Advances in Artificial Intelligence – IBERAMIA 2010: 12th Ibero-American Conference on AI, Bahía Blanca, Argentina, November 1-5, 2010. Proceedings. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

A chapter in an edited book

Chaturvedi A, Mishra D, Mukhopadhyay S (2013) Improved Biometric-Based Three-factor Remote User Authentication Scheme with Key Agreement Using Smart Card. In: Bagchi A, Ray I (eds) Information Systems Security: 9th International Conference, ICISS 2013, Kolkata, India, December 16-20, 2013. Proceedings. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, pp 63–77

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 International Journal of Legal Medicine.

Blog post

Davis J (2015) US Government Allows Shell to Resume Drilling In The Arctic. In: IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/environment/us-goverenment-allow-shell-resume-drilling-arctic/. Accessed 30 Oct 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 (2005) Airport and Airway Trust Fund: Preliminary Observations on Past, Present, and Future. U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Liu S (2010) Methods for generating addressable focus cues in stereoscopic displays. Doctoral dissertation, University of Arizona

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

Hodgman J (2016) Bonus Advice From Judge John Hodgman. New York Times MM38

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	International Journal of Legal Medicine
Abbreviation	Int. J. Legal Med.
ISSN (print)	0937-9827
ISSN (online)	1437-1596
Scope	Pathology and Forensic Medicine