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 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

Webb S (2007) Science careers. Covering the planet with solar panels. Science 315:869

A journal article with 2 authors

Nunes F, Norris RD (2006) Abrupt reversal in ocean overturning during the Palaeocene/Eocene warm period. Nature 439:60–63

A journal article with 3 authors

Nawae W, Hannongbua S, Ruengjitchatchawalya M (2014) Defining the membrane disruption mechanism of kalata B1 via coarse-grained molecular dynamics simulations. Sci Rep 4:3933

A journal article with 5 or more authors

Saneyoshi T, Kume S, Amasaki Y, Mikoshiba K (2002) The Wnt/calcium pathway activates NF-AT and promotes ventral cell fate in Xenopus embryos. Nature 417:295–299

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Wexler S, Shaffer J, Cotgreave A (2017) The Big Book of Dashboards. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ

An edited book

Jin S, Barzaghi R (2016) IGFS 2014: Proceedings of the 3rd International Gravity Field Service (IGFS), Shanghai, China, June 30 - July 6, 2014, 1st ed. 2016. Springer International Publishing, Cham

A chapter in an edited book

Cody AJ, Colles FM, Sheppard SK, Maiden MCJ (2010) Where Does Campylobacter Come From? A Molecular Odyssey. In: Finn A, Curtis N, Pollard AJ (eds) Hot Topics in Infection and Immunity in Children VI. Springer, New York, NY, pp 47–56

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

Carpineti A (2016) Meteorites Show How Dry Mars Really Is. In: IFLScience. 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 (1998) National Airspace System: FAA Has Implemented Some Free Flight Initiatives, but Challenges Remain. 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

Brown CE (2013) Sources for the reevaluation of George Frederick Root’s career: The autobiography & a secular cantata. Doctoral dissertation, University of Maryland, College Park

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

Leland J (2016) Ground Zero, Deluged. New York Times MB4

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