How to format your references using the Journal of Forensic and Legal Medicine citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Journal of Forensic and 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

Finlay BJ. Global dispersal of free-living microbial eukaryote species. Science. 2002;296(5570):1061-1063.

A journal article with 2 authors

Ellington AD, Bull JJ. Evolution. Changing the cofactor diet of an enzyme. Science. 2005;310(5747):454-455.

A journal article with 3 authors

Gallop JL, Butler PJG, McMahon HT. Endophilin and CtBP/BARS are not acyl transferases in endocytosis or Golgi fission. Nature. 2005;438(7068):675-678.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Caraveo PA, De Luca A, Mereghetti S, Pellizzoni A, Bignami GF. Phase-resolved spectroscopy of Geminga shows rotating hot spot(s). Science. 2004;305(5682):376-379.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Kuzmeski M. The Connectors. John Wiley & Sons, Inc.; 2009.

An edited book

Niederhuber JE. Totally Implantable Venous Access Devices: Management in Mid- and Long-Term Clinical Setting. (Carlo ID, Biffi R, eds.). Springer; 2012.

A chapter in an edited book

Spencer J. Logic and Random Structures. In: Kolaitis PG, Libkin L, Marx M, et al., eds. Finite Model Theory and Its Applications. Texts in Theoretical Computer Science an EATCS Series. Springer; 2007:231-256.

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 Journal of Forensic and Legal Medicine.

Blog post

Andrews R. This Is What Caused The Most Powerful Eruption In Human History. IFLScience. January 31, 2017. Accessed October 30, 2018. https://www.iflscience.com/environment/caused-most-powerful-eruption-human-history/

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. Student Athletes: Most Schools Meet Proposed Academic Performance Reporting Requirements. U.S. Government Printing Office; 1989.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Schluter KT. Hearing Words without Structure: Subliminal Speech Priming and the Organization of the Moroccan Arabic Lexicon. Doctoral dissertation. University of Arizona; 2013.

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

Koblin J, Corasaniti N. One Nation, Under Fox. New York Times. March 25, 2017:A18.

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	Journal of Forensic and Legal Medicine
Abbreviation	J. Forensic Leg. Med.
ISSN (print)	1752-928X
Scope	General Medicine Pathology and Forensic Medicine Law