How to format your references using the Laws citation style

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

Rosenzweig, A.C. Biochemistry: Breaking Methane. Nature 2015, 518, 309–310.

A journal article with 2 authors

Jamison, D.T.; Sandbu, M.E. Global Health. WHO Ranking of Health System Performance. Science 2001, 293, 1595–1596.

A journal article with 3 authors

Guedes, J.D.; Bocinsky, R.K.; Butler, E.E. Asian Archaeology. Comment on "Agriculture Facilitated Permanent Human Occupation of the Tibetan Plateau after 3600 B.P. ". Science 2015, 348, 872.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Motoyoshi, I.; Nishida, S.; Sharan, L.; Adelson, E.H. Image Statistics and the Perception of Surface Qualities. Nature 2007, 447, 206–209.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Hopp, V. Grundlagen Der Life Sciences; Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA: Weinheim, FRG, 2000; ISBN 9783527603251.

An edited book

Pharmacoresistance in Epilepsy: From Genes and Molecules to Promising Therapies; Rocha, L., Cavalheiro, E.A., Eds.; Springer: New York, NY, 2013; ISBN 9781461464631.

A chapter in an edited book

Tansel, B.Ç. Discrete Center Problems. In Foundations of Location Analysis; Eiselt, H.A., Marianov, V., Eds.; International Series in Operations Research & Management Science; Springer US: Boston, MA, 2011; pp. 79–106 ISBN 9781441975713.

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 Laws.

Blog post

Davis, J. Paris Makes All Public Transport Free In A Bid To Tackle The Worst Smog Seen In 10 Years Available online: https://www.iflscience.com/environment/paris-makes-all-public-transport-free-in-a-bid-to-tackle-the-worst-smog-seen-in-10-years/ (accessed on 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 Air Traffic Control: FAA Uses Earned Value Techniques to Help Manage Information Technology Acquisitions, but Needs to Clarify Policy and Strengthen Oversight; U.S. Government Printing Office: Washington, DC, 2008;

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Choi, Y.-J. Function of Commissureless and Related Genes in Drosophila Neural Development. Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University: Columbus, OH, 2003.

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

Burghardt, L.F. The Legacies They Left. New York Times 2006, 14LI7.

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	Laws
Abbreviation	Laws
ISSN (online)	2075-471X
Scope