How to format your references using the Practical Laboratory Medicine citation style

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

[1]

D.J. Conley, Ecology: save the Baltic Sea, Nature 486 (2012) 463–464.

A journal article with 2 authors

[1]

J. Ellis, N.E. Mavromatos, Does gravity correct gauge couplings?, Nature 479 (2011) E5-6; discussion E6.

A journal article with 3 authors

[1]

D.L.T. Rohde, S. Olson, J.T. Chang, Modelling the recent common ancestry of all living humans, Nature 431 (2004) 562–566.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

[1]

P.A. Leighton, K.J. Mitchell, L.V. Goodrich, X. Lu, K. Pinson, P. Scherz, W.C. Skarnes, M. Tessier-Lavigne, Defining brain wiring patterns and mechanisms through gene trapping in mice, Nature 410 (2001) 174–179.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

[1]

A. Sofronas, Case Histories in Vibration Analysis and Metal Fatigue for the Practicing Engineer, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ, 2012.

An edited book

[1]

A. Adams, ed., Fish Vaccines, Springer, Basel, 2016.

A chapter in an edited book

[1]

W. Acchar, E.J.V. Dultra, Using CBA in Ceramic Formulations, in: E. J. V. Dultra (Ed.), Ceramic Materials from Coffee Bagasse Ash Waste, Springer International Publishing, Cham, 2015: pp. 31–51.

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 Practical Laboratory Medicine.

Blog post

[1]

E. Andrew, Is Your Sleep App Keeping You Up At Night?, IFLScience (2015). https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/your-sleep-app-keeping-you-night/ (accessed October 30, 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

[1]

Government Accountability Office, Business Systems Modernization: Air Force Needs to Fully Define Policies and Procedures for Institutionally Managing Investments, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC, 2007.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

[1]

J.A. Grijalva, Exploring cultural finance: A phenomenological approach to comparative cultural perceptions of money in Mexico, Doctoral dissertation, Northcentral 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

[1]

J. Schwartz, Victor Lownes, 88, Rake and Colleague of Hefner, New York Times (2017) B13.

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	Practical Laboratory Medicine
Abbreviation	Pract. Lab. Med.
ISSN (print)	2352-5517
Scope