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:

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

Brody, H. Graphene. Nature 2012, 483, S29.

A journal article with 2 authors

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

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

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

Weston, P. Bioinformatics Software Engineering; John Wiley & Sons, Ltd: Chichester, UK, 2006.

An edited book

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

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

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

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

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

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

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