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 references management programs.
BibTeX	BibTeX syles 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

Collins SL. Ecology. Biodiversity under global change. Science 2009;326:1353–1354.

A journal article with 2 authors

Hemmi JM, Zeil J. Robust judgement of inter-object distance by an arthropod. Nature 2003;421:160–163.

A journal article with 3 authors

Fontana L, Partridge L, Longo VD. Extending healthy life span--from yeast to humans. Science 2010;328:321–326.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Erlandson KJ, Miller SBM, Nam Y, Osborne AR, Zimmer J, Rapoport TA. A role for the two-helix finger of the SecA ATPase in protein translocation. Nature 2008;455:984–987.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Woolley T. Low Impact Building. In: . Oxford: John Wiley & Sons, 2013.

An edited book

Vimercati S de C di, Syverson P, Gollmann D (eds). Computer Security – ESORICS 2005: 10th European Symposium on Research in Computer Security, Milan, Italy, September 12-14, 2005. Proceedings. In: . Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer, 2005.

A chapter in an edited book

Barry P, Rajković PM, Petković MD. An Application of Sobolev Orthogonal Polynomials to the Computation of a Special Hankel Determinant. In: Gautschi W, Mastroianni G, Rassias TM (eds) Approximation and Computation: In Honor of Gradimir V. Milovanović. New York, NY: Springer, 2011, pp. 53–60.

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

Davis J. Historic Paris Climate Agreement Set To Come Into Force After EU Ratification. IFLScience, https://www.iflscience.com/environment/historic-paris-climate-agreement-set-to-come-into-force-after-eu-ratification/ (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. Education and Employment Issue Area: Active Assignments. In: . AA-97-13(3), Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1 September 1997.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Salmons I. Best Practices for Managing Burnout in Attorneys. In: . Doctoral Dissertation, Pepperdine University, 2017.

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

Vecsey G. Anything Can Happen In a San Francisco Series. New York Times, 26 October 2010, p. B12.

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