How to format your references using the Laboratory Investigation citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Laboratory Investigation. 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

Savage, N. Technology: Dancing with robots. Nature 492, S16-7 (2012).

A journal article with 2 authors

Tseng, C.-K. & Cheng, S.-C. Both catalytic steps of nuclear pre-mRNA splicing are reversible. Science 320, 1782–1784 (2008).

A journal article with 3 authors

Egholm, D. L., Knudsen, M. F. & Sandiford, M. Lifespan of mountain ranges scaled by feedbacks between landsliding and erosion by rivers. Nature 498, 475–478 (2013).

A journal article with 6 or more authors

Siwick, B. J., Dwyer, J. R., Jordan, R. E. & Miller, R. J. D. An atomic-level view of melting using femtosecond electron diffraction. Science 302, 1382–1385 (2003).

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Brown, R. Rational Choice and Judgment. (John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ, 2005).

An edited book

Assessment for Learning: Meeting the Challenge of Implementation. vol. 4 (Springer International Publishing, Cham, 2016).

A chapter in an edited book

Yen, J.-Y. & Yor, M. Brownian Excursion Theory: A First Approach. in Local Times and Excursion Theory for Brownian Motion: A Tale of Wiener and Itô Measures (ed. Yor, M.) 57–64 (Springer International Publishing, Cham, 2013).

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 Laboratory Investigation.

Blog post

Andrew, E. How To Stop Your Phone From Being Hacked. IFLScience https://www.iflscience.com/technology/how-stop-your-phone-being-hacked/ (2016).

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. Comparison of States’ Highway Construction Costs. (2003).

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Lewis, S. S. Identification of Stress-Responsive Genes in the Early Larval Stage of the Fathead Minnow Pimephales promelas. (University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, OH, 2006).

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

Biersdorfer, J. D. & Couturier, K. Treasure Your Photos and Music? A Guide to Backing Up Critical Data. New York Times B3 (2017).

In-text citations

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

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	Laboratory Investigation
Abbreviation	Lab. Invest.
ISSN (print)	0023-6837
ISSN (online)	1530-0307
Scope	Cell Biology Molecular Biology Pathology and Forensic Medicine