How to format your references using the Journal of Laboratory Automation citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Journal of Laboratory Automation (JALA). 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:

PaperpileThe citation style is built in and you can choose it in Settings > Citation Style or Paperpile > Citation Style in Google Docs.
EndNoteFind the style here: output styles overview
Mendeley, Zotero, Papers, and othersThe style is either built in or you can download a CSL file that is supported by most references management programs.
BibTeXBibTeX 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
1.
Brody, H. Graphene. Nature 2012, 483, S29.
A journal article with 2 authors
1.
Makse, H. A.; Kurchan, J. Testing the Thermodynamic Approach to Granular Matter with a Numerical Model of a Decisive Experiment. Nature 2002, 415, 614–617.
A journal article with 3 authors
1.
Yoon, S.-J.; Yi, S. K.; Lee, Y.-W. Explaining the Color Distributions of Globular Cluster Systems in Elliptical Galaxies. Science 2006, 311, 1129–1132.
A journal article with 4 or more authors
1.
Sharma, A.; Scott, J. H.; Cody, G. D.; et al. Microbial Activity at Gigapascal Pressures. Science 2002, 295, 1514–1516.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book
1.
Weston, P. Bioinformatics Software Engineering; John Wiley & Sons, Ltd: Chichester, UK, 2006.
An edited book
1.
Integrable Hamiltonian Hierarchies: Spectral and Geometric Methods; Gerdjikov, V. S.; Vilasi, G.; Yanovski, A. B., Eds.; Lecture Notes in Physics; Springer: Berlin, Heidelberg, 2008; Vol. 748.
A chapter in an edited book
1.
Conio, M.; De Ceglie, A. Esophageal Prostheses. In Self-Expandable Stents in the Gastrointestinal Tract; Kozarek, R.; Baron, T.; Song, H.-Y., Eds.; Springer: New York, NY, 2013; pp. 73–87.

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 Laboratory Automation.

Blog post
1.
Hale, T. Police Wanted To Track A Mountain Lion But Found This Madness Instead (accessed Oct 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. DOD and VA: Systematic Data Sharing Would Help Expedite Servicemembers’ Transition to VA Services; GAO-05-722T; U.S. Government Printing Office: Washington, DC, 2005.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation
1.
Clater, M. J. Interposed between God and Man: Agency in the Requiems of Berlioz and Fauré. Doctoral dissertation, Indiana University: Bloomington, IN, 2009.

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.
Koblin, J. Departing Fox Executive May Be Heading to AMC. New York Times, 2017, B6.

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 titleJournal of Laboratory Automation
ISSN (print)2211-0682
ISSN (online)1540-2452
Scope

Other styles